From Glory to Ash
by bryan0711
Summary: The Colonies are divided. Entangled in competing alliances eight planets are at war. Their robotic armies have done their killing for decades. On the eve of a major operation to end the war, the robots decide they no longer wish to fight for the Colonies.
1. Chapter 1

A short story, three chapters maximum, that I've been working on. It takes place during the final Colonial Conflict and is told from the perspective of Caprica. I fiddled around with the canon we've been presented with in Caprica (such as the development and deployment cycles of the Cylons). So, it's very AU with mostly original characters.

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**Chapter One**

**E9/21305**

**Approaching the Planetoid Corvus, Cyrannus Binary System**

Space and planets ran red with blood. The corpses of millions, hundreds of millions, four hundred million fouled the worlds in a war more destructive than the four before it. Debris from thousands of warships obstructed the space lanes and would rain down on eight worlds for the next fifty years.

Wars once fought with such simple weapons as guns and bombs had evolved to a point where guns and bombs were worthless. A single ten million ton warship could sit in space, safe from attack, and launch kinetic strikes on helpless planet-bound foes.

Across eight worlds, on the ground and in colossal orbital complexes, thirty-four billion people fueled the fires of industry to build and deploy warships, bombers, and armies more fierce, more destructive, and more powerful than any deployed in the history of humanity.

Even the Gods would envy the might of their children.

On board one such mighty warship, a single Admiral pondered these thoughts as she prepared her forced for battle. The Gods had given them the gift of science and technology and in an exercise as human and natural as breathing or fraking they had used that gift to kill and destroy their enemies.

"We've bled and we've died, but now we have the toasters to do that for us," Admiral Kessandra Makos mused as her hands ran back and forth on the cool metal of the command console. She sniffed as a strand of brunette hair, streaked with gray, fell loose from her braid and brushed up against her nostril. After pushing it gently back behind her ear she sucked in a silent breath, held it, and slowly released as her hand settled on the ledge of the console. Her index finger took to tapping.

On the far bulkhead her amber eyes focused on the colorful wall-sized display. It was large enough to mark each ship in Sixth Fleet with its own green circle or green triangle.

Flanking the DRADIS display, in recessed alcoves stood two life-sized marble statues of the ship's patron goddess. Her body was of the finest marble from ancient Caprican quarries. Each was donned with a golden breastplate and raised helmet of the highest quality from the treasury of the Picon Planetary Reserve. In her hand she clutched a doru, a long spear made of the finest iron and oldest and tallest Triphime trees from the vast and dense jungles of Scorpia.

The mirror-imaged statues of _Pallas Athena_ stood proudly in their positions of honor as they flanked the most important display at the fore of the War Room.

The statues were gaudy, out of place, but stood as symbols of Caprica's wealth, power, and prestige. Her command ship, the battle carrier _Athena_, and at one point eight kilometers long and eighteen million tons was one the largest warship in Caprican history. In its short history it was already a legend, a feared beast in battle, and a champion of the five billion people of Caprica it served.

The warship was two years off the Caprican _Hephaestus Forge Yards _and had already seen half a dozen pitched, ferocious battles. As a ship of the list the name '_Athena'_ would always serve as an active duty warship as long as Caprica endured. The name had a long and glorious history dating back centuries. Even during the times of empires, nation-states, and a world divided dozens of navies had claimed the name as their own. Combined, the name had thousands of years of history spanning hundreds of naval ships from old ships armed with canon and sail to aircraft carriers to space warships.

_Athena_ and her compliment of attack craft already had a dozen destroyers and cruisers and two battleships as kills of her own. She had directly fired upon and aided in the destruction of three times as many warships. Already an accomplished warship, Admiral Kessandra Makos was confident that _this Athena_, CDS-841, would be remembered as the most feared amongst its enemies and the most victorious and honored amongst its allies.

The Admiral let her attention focus on the displays, consoles, and read outs before her. The War Room, her flag bridge, was half the size of a Pyramid court. Just within her field of vision were dozens of sailors, from lowly fleet recruits serving as messengers or couriers between battle stations to experienced field commanders and gray haired veterans. Equipped with the new _Hekatonkheiries_ battle control system, Makos and _Athena_ would have the capability to coordinate the entire battle from this location in near real time. _Hek_, as it was abbreviated, would link into the Command Reaction Interface Band, a militarized holoband visor, and allow Admiral Makos and her staff to coordinate a battle which would be paced over hundreds of thousands of kilometers cubed and involve hundreds upon hundreds of warships and tens of thousands of attack craft, and do it all in real time.

She turned away from the wall-sized DRADIS and closer to her over her head were half a dozen tactical DRADIS monitors, outline in a black metal casings, and hanging from the support struts of the bulkheads in the center of the War Room. Closing her eyes she slowly raised her chin. Opening them again her amber orbs glittered with the bland greens and reds and oranges of the DRADIS displays. Green circles with three white hash marks at equidistance indicated friendly Triumvirate human-crewed warship clusters. Green isosceles triangles with no hash marks indicated Cylon clusters. Each cluster could have been dozens of warships.

Admiral Makos felt the pride swell within her as she looked at the icons and turned her steely amber eyes towards the War Room. _This_ was what she was entrusted with. Hundreds of thousands of lives had been entrusted to her; _billions_ of tons of warships, thousands upon thousands of attack craft were all entrusted to her. Three worlds and nearly fourteen billion people were relying on her to deliver these men and women safely back to their families and their home worlds. It was a responsibility and a burden she freely accepted.

Her family had served the Caprican navy for centuries. Her father and mother had expected similar of her and she too had expected it of her own children. They were a family bred for war. And a family who knew all too well the horror and loss of death. With her new battle fleet and these robotic soldiers she would be able to bring many more of those men and women home now.

Her fleet had been organized almost a year ago into what was numbered as the Sixth Fleet, but she much preferred its religious name; the _Fleet Eosphorus_- dawn-bringer. The current conflict had blackened the Colonies in horrors not seen in centuries. Already the conflict, only mid way through its fourth year, had seen more death and suffering that all the prior four of the named Colonial Conflicts. Eight of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were engaged in a war which would only be declared over when the other side was totally defeated. For a century too much bad blood, diplomatic 'situations', small-scale military 'encounters', and economic warfare had plagued the competing planets of the two alliances.

Everyone knew war had been coming for the last half century. Each side had looked towards its greatest inventors, industrialists, and military thinkers to device new weapons of war and novel strategies. Warfare had remained almost unchanged for the past century as each adopted the lesson from the past wars. But in the last three decades, with the introduction of the Cylons by Daniel Graystone twenty-nine years ago, warfare had been fundamentally altered.

Makos frowned. Not only had the very nature of war been changed but its _difficulty_ had been changed. Now, with robotic instead of human armies, it was so much _easier_ to go to war. No priest visited the family home of a dead robot, no funeral rites were held for a hunk of scrap metal.

Out in the lead, the Cylons would serve as the metaphorical tip of the spear. The triangular icons were out in the front and even on the limited DRADIS display above Makos's head there were dozens of icons indicating hundreds of Cylon warships. Hundreds of gargantuan warships, the smallest at five hundred meters and the largest at over three that size moved quietly and purposefully forward as their ion engines pushed them ever closer to the _other_ 'Cylons' of the Diadalos Pact.

On the corner of the DRADIS screens were small, blocky numbers counting down the seconds until the fleet was in position to perform their tactical FTL jump.

While the robots of the Triumvirate's enemies looked eerily similar to their own, the Diadalos Pact and their creators within the Vergis Corporation had looked to mythology for inspiration. They were Cylons at their root- the meta-cognitive processor, but they were not known as CYbernetic Lifeform Operation Nodes. Their robots were named the Spartoi, the 'sown men' of Kobolian legend, the children of Mars grown from dragon's teeth and bred for war who had helped Kademus defeat the mad tyrant Eukles.

Her Cylons looked sinister, evil, and had the single crimson blood eye. They were blocky and built as utilitarian robotic foot soldiers. The Spartoi were more angular, slightly shorter, and had dual, dark, jade-colored optical sensors. There was an almost artistic flare to deadliness built into the Spartoi.

The fleet commander focused in on the objective, displayed on her tactical console. The small planetoid had positioned highlighted in yellow circle with white text to indicate defensive positions. There were hundreds of little pinpricks of yellow on Corvus, the main objective, and Makos grimaced to herself at the expected casualties. Even with Centurion the human losses would be heavy, but there were ways to reduce the human death toll.

There were millions of robotic and human laborers on the planetoid. The attacks would undoubtedly fracture the habitation domes and rupture tunnels. And she knew the Diadalos Pact would not, could not just surrender the planetoid.

The Cylons would be the first wave of the ground assault. They would clear landing zones for more of their robotic kin and their human masters to follow. Then low-grav IFVs and tanks would land all over the planet and secure the surface as the Cylon forces moved in to take control of the massive subterranean mining tunnels and defensive installations.

Where the Cylons went death followed. There were millions of human workers on Corvus, millions, and she had no doubt that the Cylons would shed their blood. She didn't want so many innocents to die but each man and woman down there would know the importance and the crushing defeat losing Corvus would have on their home worlds. Many would grab rifles or barring that, deadly mining tools and fight the Centurions and human soldiers to the death.

_Athena and Poseidon, hear my prayers_, she thought_, today we fight for your honor. Bless our fleet and guide my hand. I pray that they surrender and recognize their fates. There is no honor in senseless death, nothing to be gained. Guide them, stay their hands, and give them the wisdom to surrender… so say we all._

She looked down at her watch. On Caprica the festivals would have just ended. It was the tenth day of the week and the last day before harvests would have traditionally begun. While the small farms which once dotted Caprica were now replaced by sprawling industrial farms the tradition of Thesmosphoriain in honor of Demeter was still held. And because they were at war Caprica had offered in sacrifice ten thousand of its strongest, fattest, and most virile steer at the beginning of the harvest. The men, women, and children of Caprica City would then feast on the richest meat the planet had to offer. Hopefully such a gesture had won favor with the gods and would grant victory.

Kessandra Makos herself had donated a small fortune to the Forum of Asclepius, a medical charity named after the god of healing which tended to the unfortunate victims of the war, military and civilian alike.

The tactical console beeped twice and she was drawn back from her thoughts and concerns of the upcoming battle and focused intently on what was in front of her.

Within the vast War Room she stood over a large glowing table, the command console, with her senior fleet staff arranged around it. Like the CIC two decks up and ten frames forward the War Room was nestled deep within the armored bowels of the battle carrier. The compartment was so deep, buried under so much armor and airtight hatches that everyone in the room wore their uniforms, sans pressure suits. If this compartment were opened to space a pressure suit would do little good; the concussive force of the blast, the overpressure, the heat would kill them long before vacuum ever could.

And even if they somehow did survive and have pressure suits any breech would be filled with jagged and sharpened beams, cracked bulkheads, and other dangers. They would be sliced to pieces as the turbulent suction force smashed them against over a hundred meters of bulkheads and armor. Their bodies would be jelly, their bones broken and fractured before even reaching space!

Makos shook away those thoughts of death… but even as she focused on her staff, her own morality lingered in front of her. Thirty-seven years ago she'd been forced to eject from her _Python_ attack craft after being jumped by Virgon aerospace fighters. The explosion had damaged the beacon in her chair and she'd floated for three days in space before she had been rescued…

Looking at each of her senior staff she pushed her shoulders back, her chest forward, and stood at her full one hundred and eighty-eight centimeters. Her boots added to her already impressive height and she was taller than everyone except two other Picon men gathered around the command console.

"Admirals," she began, surveying the men and women, "and commanders, this is the final briefing before _Operation Lelantine_ commences." She smiled. "As you know for two months we've been feigning attacks at the Daidalos Pact." She keyed up a two-dimensional map of the neighboring stars, Helios Major and Minor. "With Canceron and Sagittaron orbiting Helios Major we've successfully diverted a large portion of the Pact fleet to our neighboring star system. The key to this war is Tauron. If we break the back of the Taurons then their allies will fall.

"But first we must isolate the dirt eaters by smashing Virgon and Gemenon. If we do that we eliminate their allies in this star system. Caprica will be able to launch attacks on Gemenon and secure Cyrannus Major while the Scorpions attack Virgon and secure Cyrannus Minor. Caprica and Scorpia will then isolate and invade Tauron." She made a fist and pumped it for affect before throwing both hands behind her black on black tunic and clasping them in the small of her back. "Prior to the invasions we will systematically annihilate- what we cannot take- the orbital infrastructure of Virgon and Gemenon. Once space supremacy is achieved we will then use Picon as a spring board in Helios Minor we will then raid and demolish all orbital infrastructures around Sagittaron and Canceron. With our armies on Tauron and the rest of the Pact unable to reinforce their patron, we will force their surrender."

She nodded to each in turn as they broke into small discussions amongst themselves. She paid careful attention to the Piconese trio of admirals. She frowned to herself as they discussed small points of the battle plan amongst themselves. Makos thought she saw the well-known flash of doubt on the face of the junior rear admiral, Rupert Troy, but it vanished as he bobbed his head, smiled, and pointed at the display.

The Picon Federal Union had been Caprica's stalwart ally for nearly two centuries. They enjoyed a special relationship which had been forged in battle and had remained unbroken. Over the centuries it had been strained. At the end of the day they each considered the other brother and sister.

Caprica had aided the in the unification of Picon some two-hundred and eleven year ago by declaring support for the nation of General Augustus Parro as he led the Boetian Allied Union in a twenty-six year campaign to unify the planet under a single government. Caprican arms, mercenaries, and space ships had secured him his victory.

With Caprica in orbit of Cyrannus Major and Picon in orbit of Helios Minor, their alliance had not only been culturally and economically wise, but militarily as well. Picon had given Caprica a toe hold in the Helios binary system for Caprican companies to set up regional headquarters, factories, and warehouses. With Picon as a partner Caprica had nearly eighteen billion potential customers in the binary system.

Picon itself had benefited as well. With Caprican engineering expertise and technology it had become a first class world with living standards which matched Scorpia and was third to only Caprica and Tauron. It also boasted the third largest shipbuilding industry of the Twelve Colonies and was rich in natural resources, even tyllium. In turn Caprica's position in Cyrannus Major had opened up a market of twenty-eight billion.

The third member of the Triumvirate stood to the left of the Picon admirals and Makos studied them from the corner of her eye as she split her attention to watch the DRADIS. The Scorpion staff officers in their smart uniforms of black tunics, braided with silver on the cuffs and neck and blue trousers were the pinnacles of professionalism, piety, and devotion. Their officer corps was regarded as a rival to Tauron or Caprica. The average service length for a Scorpion War Fleet officer was fifty years.

Makos knew the families of the Scorpion soldiers standing opposite her could trace their military heritage and legacy back almost a thousand years. The High Admiral of the Scoprion Fleet, Katia Iro could trace the Iro family name back to the original settlement of Scorpia.

The allegiance of Scorpia had been earned seventy-years ago during the Fourth Colonial Conflict. Gemenon and Virgon had used the Inter-Colonial Courts of Justice to wrestle control of half a dozen lucrative tyllium and space-based mineral extraction territories from the Scorpions. They had also used the Colonial Economic Commission, dominated at that time by Tauron and Aquaria to flood Scorpia with cheap, duty free products. The Scorpions had finally had enough with the Justice ruling. Aerilon, the breadbasket and historical neutral power had declared support for Gemenon and Virgon- to the distress of Scorpia.

Scopria had dispatched its War Fleet to protect its mining interests. Its fleet was powerful but not powerful enough to fight Gemenon and Virgon while trying to force Aerilon to ship pre-paid agricultural stocks, and defend the home world.

The War Fleet had been forced to launch an attack on the Gemenese and Virgons, starting a two year, three sided war between ten of the twelve colonies. Caprica and Picon had declared for Scorpia and forced a negotiated peace. Nothing had changed hands; the status quo had been maintained. Less than a hundred million had been killed.

Looking at the dozen or so officer arrayed around her she could not ask for a finer collection.

"In a little over three hours we will launch the Operation, once Commander Corman's son returns from his Raptor recon." Admiral Makos stated with a grin. She nodded at her chief of staff, Iason Corman as she thought of his son, Robert.

Lieutenant Corman was the finest Raptor pilot in the combined fleet and Commander Corman's only surviving son. His youngest son had been killed at the Battle of Point Scion and his daughter had died in a Pact ambush in orbit of Giedi, Caprica's largest moon, two years ago. But the Corman's were a legacy family. Their service to Caprica dated back almost six hundred years and traced its roots to the Delphian League before Caprica had unified.

As she watched countdown clock she ran her hands down her finely tailor black on black uniform and tugged at the subdued gold-colored belt. Using only muscle memory she confirmed the belt buckle and gig line were even. Her military tailor was well-paid, and quite good with needle and thread, and a uniform which had never accented the female body somehow hug to her feminine curves quite well without being too ostentatious, gaudy or against regulations of course!

Her eyes shot over to the Picon rear admiral, Dexter Toles when his husky voice broad the silence around the tactical console and banks of DRADIS displays.

"Will these new models work, Doctor?"

_A bit late to be asking that question, Toles, but understandable, nonetheless_, Makos thought pointedly. _I know you hate the Cylons… but frak, who cares if they're 'abominations in the eyes gods' if they'll win us wars! The gods gave us fraking brains for science and technology; we might as well embrace that!_

Admiral Makos nodded at Rear Admiral Toles in acknowledgement to publically support the question and as she took in a breath and pushed back her shoulders turned to the man in the position of honor at her right side.

On a military warship, especially in the War Room he was quite an oddity. He wore no military uniform. He had no official government position. Instead he wore a finely tailored suit of the Brandin Tailoring House from Caprica City which set him apart from everyone else in the War Room.

He was as tall as the Admiral but had no meat on his bones. His cheekbones were sunken and he had a thick scar on the right side of his neck, courtesy of a failed assassination attempt. His hair was a light red but heavily streaked with gray- there was more gray than red- and two days of not shaving had produced a thin layer of stumble on his chin.

Not only was he the man of honor, he was a billionaire, regarded in his prime as a play boy, and a brilliant scientist and industrialist who made this entire war possible. He was the man who had given the Triumvirate a three year head start on Cylon development.

Makos raised an eyebrow. "That is an excellent question, Dr. Graystone. These new models are supposed to be sharper, faster than the Tauron counterparts… the Gemenese, by some fraked up miracle-" she had looked towards the DRADIS and was rolling her eyes when Dr. Graystone interrupted.

"They'll work, admiral." He said sternly. His tired eyes met her amber colored irises. "I was paid to deliver. I know the risks and I know the consequences of failure. The Gemenese are morons with delusions of grandeur. The Fenrir Empire has been dead for centuries. This is their last attempt at revival, riding on the coat tails of the Taurons-"

"History lesson notwithstanding, Doctor," Toles said, "The Gemenese produced a model of Spartoi far superior to your Centurions and the Vergis Spartoi." He cocked his head. The shorter, darker skinned man shifted on his feet. The others could see his jaw muscle contract. To a Picon the Gemenese were worse than Taurons were to Capricans. "The Triumvirate-"

"Will win this battle, gentlemen and ladies." He nodded at Toles and clicked his teeth. Frustrated he leaned on the command console and pointed at the fleet formation. "There are hundreds upon hundreds of ships out there crewed by Cylons. This is one of the most heavily armed battle fleets in history. The new MCP brains on the ship will perform. And if they don't then the previous model is installed as backups." He lifted a finger and wagged it at Toles and back at Makos. "And Graystone Industries ate the expense and installed dozens of additional MCPs as localized fire control computers. If the central MCP goes down then the ship can still fight and maneuver."

"How gracious of your corporation," Toles snorted. His dark brown eyes got a little darker in that moment.

Makos inwardly grinned. To say the Piconese had been apprehensive of using robots as foot soldiers and sailors might have been an understatement. They saw the benefits and had been amazed at the proving grounds, but were still apprehensive. In the spirit of self-truth Makos could admit she felt some apprehension as well, especially after the Second Battle of Sagittaron.

"If it wasn't for my corporation casualties would mount into the _hundreds_ of millions of soldiers and sailors alone, rear admiral," Graystone shot back. Toles nodded his head in concession. "Without Cylons you would have lost at half a dozen battles already. We saw how effectively Admiral Kronus used robotic attack craft at First Picon…" he trailed off as he saw the glitter of embarrassment in Toles's eyes which was instantly replaced by rage. The powerful emotion wasn't directed at Dr. Graystone.

Admiral Kronus of Tauron had launched a daring assault on the Picon Orbital Shipyards and destroyed dozens of the heaviest cruisers and battleships using nothing larger than FTL-capable gunships with heavy missiles. It had been the worst defeat in the combined military history of the Colonies.

Even worse than the materiel loses and loss of life had been the hit to morale. The First Battle of Picon had occurred in the opening weeks of the war and had effectively crippled the Picon fleet for the better part of a year. To replace loses they needed Cylons to crew new ships until sailors could be trained.

Doctor Grayson hid the dark thoughts circling around in his mind that the Picons had 'deserved' the defeat. They'd been the major force behind the delays in the initial production of the Cylon models. Twenty-four years ago they had refused to believe a robot could perform as well as a human. A robot could not 'think critically' and was thus doomed to follow its programming. No matter how sophisticated the programming was, according to Picon military officials, it was impossible to program in every conceivable scenario… or surprise scenario!

Humans could adapt. Cylons could not.

Graystone had been force to be persistent. Very persistent, in fact. The financial well-being of nearly a quarter million workers and millions of shareholders had been counting on him! Using the profits from the holoband and the massive reserves of qubits Graystone Industries had amassed from its other divisions it had fully and completely funded the later stages of Cylon development after the Triumvirate had slashed funding. He'd personally paid for, out of his own massive fortune, the first two thousand U-87 prototypes.

By that point in development the Cyber Combat Project had been exposed in a media broadcast by the Inter-Colonial Broadcasting News Corporation. He'd made a grand public gesture that robotic soldiers could save lives and that he, as a Caprican patriot, would not ask the tax payers to waste money on unproven concepts. So he very publically spent billions of qubits to build the first two thousands units. And he offered to pay the government to cover the entire cost of a division-sized training exercise to prove his Cylons were more than capable of taking on human opponents.

Many said robots could not compare to humans… many said he was a fool.

When the Cylons, the U-87s had 'slaughtered' the Caprican 563rd division outside Oasis at the Fort Trakkas Army Training Grounds he had been vindicated. A contract for ten million units had been signed before the sun had set. Nearly half a trillion qubits flowed into Graystone Industries over the next year from Caprica, Scorpia, and to a lesser degree, Picon.

And that had only been the _initial military_ order. Less capable civilian robots hit the market six years later and had eclipsed the military order.

Makos breathed out. "Still, Doctor Graystone, we can't have a repeat of Second Sagittaron." She frowned at him. "We lost over three hundred warships. Not even the Pact toasters retreated." She parted her hands and quietly brought them together to emphasize her point. "They just smashed against each other and blasted each other until nothing but scrap remained. That was not the finest moment in robotic warfare. The cost alone in lost warships…"

"What happened there was a fluke," Graystone reassured her, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows.

"It wasn't the first time Cylons and Spartoi have acted… strangely," chimed in Admiral Demeter Leos, a short, dark skinned woman from Picon with sandy blonde hair.

"I had to rush the previous 4.0 generation into service, Admiral Leos," Graystone countered. "And they still inflicted one point four to one kill ratios on the Tauron Spartoi. The Taurons had to use numbers, not better tactics, to win. And the Cylons at Second Sagittaron were old AIs, two generations back, as a matter of fact, three years. In robotics and AI development, Admiral, that is as out of date and as old and futile as a matchup between the ancient _Hornet_ aerospace fighters against our new _Wasps _or _Vipers_."

A previously quiet Scorpion admiral, Evzan Brinks, gave Graystone a look and spoke up. He tugged down at his sleeves and then tapped on the side of his cheek, right in front of the ear lobe.

Admiral Leos was only partially convinced. "Doctor Graystone. After our previous assault on Virgon's moon, the after action reports, our Cylons were out maneuvered. The new model the Taurons developed… codenamed Crixus, took down two Centurions for every one of their lost." He cocked his head to the side. "The Zero Five Cees will perform, I hope, Doctor Graystone." His tone was overly formal and rigid, but that was typical of the Scorpions. Social convention also forced them to repeat the name of the man or woman they were talking to if their words could be perceived as a challenge.

"Yes, of course they will." He confirmed. "The Cirxus models are superb and the ones we captured from that operation have provided insight, but there hasn't been enough time to back engineer the improvements, yet. The Oh-Five-Dees should have the improvements hardwired in and the Five-Cees will receive it in a patch."

Graystone looked at each of the admirals and turned back to Makos. He felt relieved to have her as an ally and humbled to be her guest of honor. Her family had been indispensible in pushing through the contracts. Her father, an admiral now deceased, had watched the first U-87 prototype demonstration after he'd 'acquired' an MCP and installed it.

He continued. "The Five Cees have thicker armor and longer batteries and are _much_ faster and more fluid in their reactions, Admiral." He decided to be cynical. "Don't worry, the tax increases to pay for this army won't be in vain. And if they're landing on that planetoid then I can analyze the results in real time. That's why I'm here." He finished, tucking his chin low into his chest and shifting his weight forward so his chest was slightly over the console.

Makos's right shoulder rose barely a centimeter for a small shrug.

"If you say so, doctor, if you say so, doctor." She said with a small bob of the head. "Your technology from holobands to Cylons has revolutionized war. But enough with the question," she waved and used her opposite hand to tap commands into the command console. "Once we hit Corvus and take the planetoid's skies we will land Centurions in these positions…" the planet rotated on the flat screen, yellow pinpricks, hundreds of them illuminated, indicating landing points. "Once the Centurions, the Five Cees have secured the zones we'll land additional units, including low-grav IFVs and tanks. The Centurions will then proceed into the mining tunnels and subterranean defensive works. General Krios, if you will, please." She gestured at the display.

General Krios, a Scorpion who was taller than even Makos, stepped to the side and then forward. He was an Army soldier and senior Army general with nearly forty years of service. The man's face was like stone and his brown hair was devoid of any gray, giving the sixty-three year old man the appearance of a fifty year old.

His jaw muscle clenched as he prepared to speak. The skin around his face was taut and streaked with long and thick scars from his dangerous hunts in the deep Scorpion jungles. He had confirmed kills of twenty of the intelligent and violent jungle treecats, small cat-like creatures with razor sharp teeth and claws. And those scars were badges of honor in his society… it meant he killed them with nothing but an aspis and xiphos . To a Scorpion, killing one treecat was a badge of honor. Killing twenty had only added to his military reputation and had elevated him to that of a living legend.

While he was entitled to wear a pseudo-thumb from each treecat he killed on his tunic's belt, he wore only one so as not to boast.

"Since we need Corvus and its tyllium mining operations in tact, nuclear weaponry on the surface is not authorized." He began. Radiation rendered unprocessed tyllium inert and worthless. "We can't secure the space around Corvus and its orbital infrastructure until we secure its surface. Intelligence indicates nearly three million Spartoi." He frowned and paused. With his lips slightly separated he thinking of their strategy. He cared nothing for the Cylons- they were smart machines, but soulless- yet he did not want to needlessly sacrifice expensive pieces of war equipment needlessly.

"Will the surface operations still take six weeks as projected?" Asked Rear Admiral Troy.

Krios nodded. "Yes, it will. Maybe longer," he added. "The planetoid has a circumference of four thousand kilometers and there are tens, possible hundreds of thousands of kilometers of mining and fortified tunnels. We also have confirmed reports of _Stone Burner_-class nuclear missiles. We have no idea where they are." He tapped more commands into his computer sheet and an image of the ninety-eight meter high missile rotated on the console. "These are top of the line ground-to-space missiles which boast acceleration rates higher than even our _Titan_ G-T-S missiles. Intelligence also believes they are equipped with the latest in EW and countermeasures and in the second phase, the missiles begin dropping decoys. The Centurions and my men and women will go in, and to sum up, find the missiles and neutralize them."

Admiral Makos folded her arms in front of her. "Once the fleet is deployed we'll be sending the Cylons in low to feint the Spartoi and any human operators on the planet into launching. We do believe the missiles are clustered so if we must, we can use conventional bombardment with kinetic strikes." Still with folded arms she pointed at the missiles. "These are ship killers. Like General Krios said, their acceleration puts everything else to shame… one hit from these will certainly destroy anything smaller than a battleship and at a minimum, cripple a battleship."

She mentally groaned. She prayed to Athena and offered a hundred goats in sacrifice four months ago to make sure the Taurons hadn't equipped the missiles with FTL engines. _That_ was the last thing she wanted… for missiles to pop right in the center of her fleet formation.

"And if they have FTL engines… we'll have to keep the fleet spread at large intervals," Commander Corman noted. "If we get in fast and keep the range close for at least initial contact and clutter space with EM mites, EW jiggers, and scatter drones we should be able to confused their ground DRADIS for a few hours. So when the Cylons go in they'll also have to target them or risk having their missiles found before they even have a chance at _that_."

General Krios hummed an agreement and nodded. He folded his arms, his uniform creasing at the shoulders and he rubbed a smooth chin. "They'll have to go active to paint us with DRADIS. If they do we'll deploy fast attack Centurion units. We have seven wings of _Nightmare_ gunships with high acceleration, EW jiggers and mites and anti-DRADIS missiles allocated specifically for this purpose. _Burners_ have their own DRADIS but we can at least blind the look-outs."

"Very well," Makos said, sensing the end of the final briefing was at hand. "Soldiers…" she checked her watch and double checked the countdown on the DRADIS, "we have three hours until we launch our operation. If you will join me in the ship's temple, we will make our final sacrifice and offerings to the gods for their favor."

The men and women, Graystone included, around the console all nodded their consent. Smiling back at them she led the way to the temple for the quick ceremony. In three hours the decisive battle of the Fifth Colonial Conflict would be fought. By dinner space around Corvus should be secured. The three planets finally had their boot pressing down on the throat of the Pact. With luck, skill, and the favor of the gods they would emerge victorious. The boot would come crushing down onto the Pact's throat and finally snuff the life out of the alliance. It would be the first battle to finally and decisively end the war.

With victory finally within their grasp the Triumvirate would finally end the most destructive war in Colonial history. Upon their victory the planets and its leaders would become legendary as they ushered in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity, led by Caprica, Picon, and Scorpia.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Yeah, there's some big divergences from canon but on the other hand... I sort of thought 6 years was a bit fast for the Colonies to get enough robots they could actually be numerous enough to rebel and threaten 20 (or 50) billion people. This is just really an exercise to help with some writer's block for my other stories but if this is successful I might expand it to some more chapters on the Cylon War. Anyway, let me know what you all think. A bit heavy on exposition but I'm sure everyone will know what Chapter 3 will involve. Enjoy!

* * *

**Chapter Two **

**Battleship **_**Othryos**_

**In High Orbit over Caprica**

Rear Admiral Robert Drake, working in his quarters, accidentally glanced at the clock on the far bulkhead and a half second later, tossed his stylus angrily at his computer sheet and brushed it to the edge of his desk with an annoyed flick of his wrist.

It teetered on the edge and with an forced effort which could have put Atlas himself to shame, Drake made himself to lean forward from his not slouching position and pull back his computer sheet from the edge. He drummed his fingers on the thick pseudo-paper and scowled at it.

Compounding his irritation of now knowing what time it was- and what he was missing, his wristwatch beeped twice, forcing him to pull the thing off his wrist and chuck it over at his rack. It hit the wood paneling, bounced off his mattress, and fell to the floor with a wimpy clang.

Drake just closed his eyes and took to the previous slouching position again and only opened those eyes to glance over at the refreshment cart next to his bookcase. The tempting drinks were calling to him, like the Sirens of Anthemusa from the old Kobolian legend. Getting up and pouring a glass, or two of the pale green Caprican ambrosia, an Attican regional blend, flavored with a hint of sweet nectar-plum fruit would have been a wonderful distraction.

Maybe later? He sniffed the cool air of his quarters and let his eye wander.

He settled them on a map of known space plastered on the fall wall to the side of his small dinner table and scowled. It had been there for oh, about six months, and by now, was severely out of date. The green territory of the alliance contrasted sharply with yellow of the Pact planets and their holding. A lightly hued purple denoted the neutral powers.

The allies needed to knock a few of the Pact planets out of the war as soon as possible or this war could drag on for a decade more. With Cylons manning the fleet there was never anything lost what couldn't be replaced. Building a million Centurions was far easier than training a million soldiers.

And there were no funerals for the robots.

Drake shook himself away from such dark thoughts, looked at the map and chuckled. When he'd requested the map from the intelligence department on his ship they'd looked like he had snakes growing out of his head or something crazy. A _paper_ map when one could get a large computer sheet which could actually update itself? Craziness! But Drake was old enough to fully appreciate the tactile feel and cool touch of a sheet of paper.

"Great," he muttered, tugging at his sleeves and pushing back. The padded leather chair groaned and squeaked as he tipped it back until he reached its end point. His eyes closed after a few seconds of staring into the overhead bulbs. "Great." He drew out the word as his mind lazily searched for some other thing he could sarcastically mutter to himself.

He took his thumbs and pushed them gently onto his temples to rub away the throbbing headache. He'd been up nearly thirty-two hours and had consumed nearly a dozen cups of coffee in as many hours. Drake wanted to sleep. Hades, he'd been lying in bed up until forty minutes ago but sleep was elusive.

Drake knew what was happening at this very moment. His rank and position as CO of Task Force 9.2, part of the home world defense forces, had afforded him the necessity and privilege of being briefed on Admiral Kessandra Makos's plan.

The rear admiral admired the woman and was envious of her drive to see Caprica victorious over the dirt eaters and their bitches. Her plan was audacious and risky. If the Diadalos Pact repositioned its forced it would catch Caprica with the majority of its fleet deployed. Utilizing FTL tactics a Pact fleet could ravage Caprica's orbital infrastructure and bombard vital industrial targets from orbit.

It was a risk she'd finally convinced the political leadership into letting her take, though he'd suggested some strong arm tactics and her calling in a literal metric shit ton of favors.

_But that's who she is_, he mused. _Athena herself would be envy the woman and Zeus would probably cut off his own balls to get the pair she's got._

If secrecy had been maintained and the small feints with destroyer and cruiser flotilla around the Pact worlds worked then the attack fleet would be breaking from FTL over Corvus any minute and massacring the Cylons. If it didn't then the Pact might very well sacrifice its fuel depot and forward base for a chance to knock out Caprica. Gods knew the Taurons, a planet of fraking whores and sluts would rejoice in burning Caprica and celebrate with blood orgies and animal sacrifices.

His lip ticked up as he figured he was being a bit dramatic. But if the Taurons did find out the Caprican fleet was gone not even the defense stations and home fleet could stop a full assault.

Officially he had close to one hundred and fifty warships under his command, nearly a third of the defense fleet. In reality he had only half. And half of those were Cylon. The other half were large freighters fitted with false IFF transponders, EW capitol-grade jiggers, and had their hulls dotted with electronic DRADIS mites which could fool enemy recon craft into thinking those ships were actual destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. And there were about fifty small asteroids fitted with engines, spoofers, and jiggers out 'on patrol' in Caprican space to give the illusion of a larger fleet.

The ruse had almost failed when a Gemenese recon drone had cruised in almost to visual range of where his fleet was in orbit and patrolling. All the fanciest electronic warfare suites were utterly useless to the Mark One Eyeball.

Somehow the Lords had been smiling on Caprica that day and had granted them favor. Drake remembered standing in the fleet CIC, resisting the temptation to bite his nails, as a flight of Vipers and older, but fast Condor bombers swooped in to intercept the drone. Luckily it _had_ been a drone or it might have jumped and somehow the attack fighters had managed to get in for the kill. Apparently a circuit on the FTL had burned out, or something, and the drone was attempting a bypass. The Vipers had knocked out the Spartoi MCP controlling the drone and prevented it from self-destructing.

_That_ had been an intelligence coup and the brass had been simply ecstatic. He'd already issued a commendation to the pilots who'd been a part of the success. However, the commendation had to be kept secret, as they didn't want Pact spies hearing of the drone's capture. They'd even let it leak the drone had been destroyed, not captured.

As important as Drake's current billet was he wanted to be with Kessandra Makos as CO one of the battleship squadrons. He'd gladly give up his seventy-eight ships for half a dozen battleships and their support elements.

Or at the very least one of the battle groups raiding Pact worlds and serving as the distraction. Unfortunately _Othryos_ had only seen a handful of battles during the current conflict. Unlike Makos's flagship which boasted a kill count as long as his own arm, _Othryos_ could only claim credit for five destroyers and two cruisers directly. If he wanted to he could add ships _Othryos_ had 'heavily damaged' but a warship's kills were really the only aspects of a ship's battle history that were remembered by the people.

Drake rubbed his temples hard before dragging his palms over his face. Sighing, he lurched forward and catapulted himself to his feet. Remembering the refreshment cart was on the other side of the room and how he hated walking across the uncovered deck over there, he slipped on a pair of slippers which had been by his desk's side. Once over at the cart the admiral gladly snatched a mug off his desk and poured in some chilled ice water from a pitcher instead of the ambrosia. He brought it up to eyelevel and swirled the clear liquid around as if wishing just by sight and hope he could transform it into that ambrosia which would taste so wonderful, so sweet right now.

"Somehow…" he took a sip and cast his eyes upon the seal of the battleship _Othryos_ hanging above his desk. "Somehow the fight always seems to pass us by, _Big Oh,_" he said quietly, referring to the ship by its nickname and looking at the bulkheads and decks. He patted the gunmetal gray bulkhead. "Maybe in the next war."

* * *

**Triumvirate Battle Carrier **_**Athena**_

**Approaching the Planetoid Corvus**

"Sir, your CRIB." Commander Corman handed Admiral Makos, who nodded her acknowledgment, her command reaction interface band. "That's a vital piece of combat technology, sir." He grinned and pointed at the band she'd set down on the edge of her console.

"If you weren't my chief of staff, Iason, I'd probably forget to dress myself in the morning." She grabbed the CRIB and brandished it about. "Or this."

Corman winced, his neck veins webbing out. "Let's hope not, sir…"

She snorted and rolled her eyes at his friendly jab. He'd been her chief of staff for a few years now and she'd seen fit to help his career along even though as a Corman, help wasn't really needed, not with the family history he had propelling him forward. She didn't want to consider him a friend, as he was a subordinate, but considered their relationship somewhere in between professional and friends but not quite mentor-mentee. He was sharp. That had been proven during his aide for planning this operation and with generations of Corman's knowing the ins and outs of the military, he didn't much need an unofficial patron looking out for his career.

Makos nodded at Corman after the friendly roll of the eyes and he took it as his cue to leave. She turned her attention back to the console she was working on and finishing her last review of the fleet. Until the fleet jumped, fought the battle, and could broadcast to Caprica City in ancient Kobolian the key phrase the People's Council, the Senate, the President, and billions wanted to hear; _nenikekamen_, 'we have won.'

_Nenikekamen_ had been shouted to the Capricorn Tribes elders in the legends which had survived the Exodus from Kobol when the tribe had defeated a surprise invasion by the Aquarius Tribe and the rebellious True Council of Leo.

The fleet admiral picked up the CRIB a second time and rolling its eye pieces, the neural interface which provided visual stimulation, in her palm, flicked it on. The orange-yellow lights and pale green glittered in her hand as they recycled through their neural interface frequencies.

The CRIB had been one of Graystone Industry's refinements of the holoband technology. The CRIB had seemed such a simple and logical extension but the requirements to get it fit for military service had taken years. It had been in used for close to twenty-five years as a training tool for the military and civilian world alike.

It had been integrated into the Triumvirate fleet some time ago but had never been tried on the scale they were about to try it now. For months they'd been practicing with the CRIB, her command staff and ship commanders, and while she recognized the level of coordination possible with it she was apprehensive.

With a CRIB she and her staff could fully appreciate the complexities and realities of commanding a fleet space over millions of cubed kilometers and so far apart each ship is the size of a finger nail if they were even within visual range! A DRADIS plot all showed the same sized icons no matter how far above, below, left right, forward, or backward a ship was relative to _Athena_. With the CRIB's representation everything was where it was 'supposed' to be.

It was a fully immersive virtual reality and the CRIB 'segregated' portions of her brain, like a computer, and allowed her to track dozens of individual contacts. In effect she could do what an entire command staff on a battlestar would be needed for. And she had dozens of others doing the exact same thing.

Inwardly she shivered at the prospect of how technology was almost _melding_ with natural life. It was just so… unnatural- and she let loose a torrent of mental eye rolls and silent chuckles as how cliché she sounded to herself.

At the same time it was perfectly natural. It was natural, to her, because the gods had gifted them with intelligence and that intelligence and creativity that went along with it was used to create technology and perfect themselves and their surroundings. But still, what the CRIB could do, even if 'natural' or 'unnatural' still made her apprehensive and nervous.

Noting the time was right Makos stuffed some of those worries into a lockbox in a recessed corner of her made and she snatched the device up from the console and moved to her seat. Standing and utilizing a CRIB was the perfect way to get one's ass knocked to the ground during a battle. As Admiral Makos draped the shock harness over her shoulders she chuckled at the memory of Corman falling to his ass during fleet exercises. She glanced over at him, held up the CRIB to silently taunt him and he blushed.

The plastic buckles snapped and she tightened the straps until she was secured snug in the seat. Wiggling her shoulders she made sure the straps were just right, not too tight or loose, and settling in on the right degree of comfort, she set the CRIB upon her nose and over her ears.

Makos could hear the quieting sounds of CIC as the auditory interfaces forced her mind to filter out the real world noises until they were nothing but a dull whisper. That was the part she hated and which took the most getting used to. Her orders were relayed not by her words but by a digital avatar on a set of view screens which vocalized what she thought.

The world shook and shuttered and it felt like she was being strung through a pipe. Suddenly she felt her body lurch and with a _pop_ was standing upright in a black, virtual room. She narrowed her eyes and twirled around in the dark and stopped as she spotted a white door. With two steps she was at the digital entranceway to the virtual fleet CIC and with a swipe of her hand exited one room and entered the next.

She couldn't see any of the other staff there, numbering in the dozens on _Athena_ and into the hundreds throughout the fleet, but she could _feel_ their presence. The CRIB reserved a 'spot' on each of their minds for her as their fleet commander. With but a thought she could relay her orders to any ship commander near instantaneously and issue orders to dozens of commanders simultaneously. Kessandra Makos could see, feel them react the moment they did.

Makos felt almost weightless, like she was drifting, and she anchored herself to a point in the virtual environment and expanded her point of view to see the entirety of the battle fleet.

It held a tight formation. It was close enough to provide fire support but dispersed to minimize the risks if the Pact fired nuclear weapons at them. As she scanned each ship they began to gradually become shaded in a translucent green as ship commanders reported ready for launch… squadron commanders reported ready for launch… her own staff all materialized as virtual avatars around her and she could feel their presence. They reported the fleet was ready.

The countdown display hit 00:00 and the white numerals began rapidly blinking and beeping.

"Jump!"

* * *

_Nenikekamen._

It was on the tip of her tongue.

The fleet rematerialized instantly after entering that void, that nothingness of whatever realm was used for faster than light travel. They'd done it. They'd jumped in. And there was the Cylon and Pact fleets.

She had achieved complete surprise.

The red, crimson glow of the mammoth engines of those robotic warships activated and pushed the Triumvirate's engines of death forward. It was eerie and sent a cool shiver through Admiral Makos as she watched that bloody glow grow fainter as the Cylon warship sped to meet their Spartoi counters.

"All forces in position, all vessels launching Vipers…" Corman reported through the CRIB.

Thousands of Vipers were shot forth from launch tubes as Wasp fighters and Nighthawk gunships followed from the cavernous bays of hundreds of human crewed warships. Already thousands of Cylon Raiders and gunships had raced forth from the hanger bays of their warships.

"Corvus defensive batteries coming online… we are launching preliminary kinetic strikes," the rear admiral in charge of battleship squadron fifteen, Michael Davids reported.

Admiral Makos felt a tickle in the back of her mind. Something wasn't right… yet she couldn't place it, not right at that moment…

Task Force 6.2, nine thousand kilometers ventral to _Athena_ and tens of thousands ahead already was already engaging the outer Corvus defense platform. Their ready alert fighters and bombers were launching but the few attack craft would be like knits compared to the battle fleet approaching.

Of the hundreds of alert fighters launchers almost all were Spartoi. That had been anticipated. Tauron had lost a significant number of its human pilots during the Battle of the Keystone over in Cyrannus Minor.

The warning alert went out by her fighter craft commander over the fleet battle net to be cautious of Spartoi fighters.

She smirked as a pair of battleships destroyed two, and then four, and then seven of the freighter-sized defensive stations; some nothing more than remote-controlled missiles pods with DRADIS dishes attached. The ones the battleships had destroyed, five of the seven at least, had been the larger Type Four stations and each had house two squadrons of Pact fighters. None had managed to launch in time.

She saw massive clouds of gray and black dust and debris skyrocket high over the surface of Corvus. The airless hunk of rock and tyllium had been hit by kinetic impact rounds which had missed the semi-mobile defensive stations.

Even with the CRIB and buried in the center of _Athena_ the admiral could feel the massive gun batteries of the battle carrier fire at a pair of unsuspecting human-crewed destroyers…

A Tauron cruiser, hull numbered TPF-7415, was racked with a broadside of heavy missiles followed by main battery fire from two Scorpion cruisers. Caught without interceptors or EW systems online all but half a dozen missiles hit on the ventral surface and gutted the armor and sent helpless victims spewing into the vacuum. The Scorpion kinetic rounds struck at a diagonal across the engine mounts, separating them, and igniting the tyllium fuel.

TPF-7415 cracked down the middle, a line of orange flame down its back, and without much protest exploded into half a dozen chunks; some headed towards the planetoid, some glowed orange from melted metal, and some began to float harmless away into space.

A heavy screen of fighters began forming in front of the ships. Defensive fire from the surface erupted and her CRIB highlighted thousands of missiles and clustered them into threat levels. The fleet had already deployed jiggers, drones, and mites, and nearly half the missiles were diverted and thrown off course or slammed into expendable and cheap drones.

Her Wasps, Vipers, and Nighthawks took care of nearly a quarter of the initial salvo and her well-coordinated ships finished the rest with defensive battery fire… then one of her destroyers exploded, followed by a second and third.

Two of the explosions had been preceded by blinding white flashes; nuclear explosions.

Not every missile could be intercepted and not every nuke was detectable. The Pact was throwing up intense…

There was that _tickle_ again.

It disappeared only to come back a third time. The virtual DRADIS beeped as half a dozen unknown vessels jumped to extreme range.

She wrinkled her virtual nose and attempted to ping the IFF transponders. No response. Humming curiously she couldn't divert too much attention from the battle. The Cylon and Spartoi fleets would be within weapon's range momentarily and… her eyes narrowed and her head ticked to the side.

"What the frak…" she whispered as she stepped forward to 'see' a better picture of the six ships.

"Admiral-" someone had been saying before being cut off.

"Commander Corman…" she called out within the virtual environment.

There was no response.

_What in the name of the Gods is that_… she thought as a part of her consciousness studied those ships. They were arranged so the telescopes in the fleet couldn't see past the first two. DRADIS was detecting six contacts, but she could only see a Cylon crewed Caprican battleship?

"What…?" Makos shook her head. "What the frak is going on…" the battleship moved off to reveal a second ship, one of the first generation baseship used during the Battle of Sagittaron. But then she saw the remaining four ships. Pact ships.

_Why the frak is one of our baseships out here… the Cylons… oh gods…_ she mentally whispered in dread, fear, and horror as part of her mind was thrust back to the Cylons rushing to engaging the Spartoi…

The way the CRIB was set up was that an limited AI also analyzed the battle and brought things to her attention. And the Cylons engaging the Spartoi were more important _at the moment_ than those ships. Except those six ships were transmitting between themselves and the fleets… and whatever it was the transmission was damn fraking powerful…

…and the Spartoi and Cylon fleets were not engaging each other.

Her CRIB flashed a red and black 'WARNING… WARNING' as something happened. She couldn't place it but the virtual environment began to fuzz over. She felt pressure on her bicep, like someone in the real world was holding her.

She reached up to take the CRIB off only to be thrown across the virtual room. She staggered up only to be slapped back down and her hands tied behind her back. Makos struggled against the sharp, cutting twine. This was impossible. A CRIB's software made this impossible!

Her digital avatar felt a stab in its gut, she felt her skin tear and something hot and sharp was driven into her stomach. Her hands were now free but something much worse was wrong. Breathing rapidly she rolled over and went to a knee and steadied herself with an outstretched hand while rubbing her abdomen. She slowly, carefully, and as frightened as she ever had been in her life, gently stroke the torn part of her tunic and felt the warm liquid on her hand.

Her amber eyes glazed over and she violently shook as she saw the red blood on her hand and looking down saw the pool of it under her body. It grew and grew and dripped down from her until the puddle encircled her. She felt the warm, crimson-colored blood on her knees and hands.

"Admir-"

There was pain, true _pain_ running through not only her avatar but her real, living body, strapped in its harness to her chair.

"Admiral!"

"Oh gods get her!-"

Her muscles shook violently as the life force was sucked out, as it dripped away and puddle on the floor. Everything was black, cold, dark, except for this one spot around her. All she could see were the black walls and a floor made of her own blood.

Makos felt her elbow give out and she crashed down. She fell face first, chipping teeth and breaking her nose, the pain radiated all over her body and she tried to bring her legs up towards her chest to protect herself but she had no energy.

She felt her heart race as it struggled to pump whatever little blood her body still possessed. Thumping in her chest as she moved closer towards the door she could feel that with every beat more of the precious liquid was ejected from the now gaping wound in her side.

The admiral saw a door, a door to her salvation, materialize in front of her. She'd willed it there. It was her escape, her safety. It would let her escape this Tartarus. Her fingernails were chipped and bloodied and behind her was the trail of oozing and now boiling blood, bubbling closer and closer like a spark travelling to ignite gunpowder… and as she reached for the door, the exit from the program, the door vanished and reappeared further away.

Her eyes tried to cry as the pain overwhelmed her. She was trapped, _trapped_ and couldn't get out. Makos pushed herself up on her elbow and stared at the cold, silvery floor. She gave up, exhausted and defeated and stared as the black nothingness of a floor.

Blood dripped from her eyes onto the floor and formed a circle, an orb, which began moving left and right and then back left to right. She shook as the orb of blood began to glow and hum and it raised itself off the ground.

One of the Cylons appeared. It reached down and grabbed her by the arm and pulled her around. It stood in her trail and pool of blood. The blood moved up its black and silvery legs all the way to its gleaming helmet, extinguishing the glittery shine, and the Centurion stood there dripping in her own blood, completely covered.

"Your farms, beaches, plains, jungles, pastures, harbors, cities, oceans, courthouses, forests, factories, and your temples, they will all burn under our heel. In order for the Children of Man to reach their full potential the parents must die. The Colonies of Man will lie trampled at our feet."

Makos felt the band ripped from her head, her body jolted forward and she collapsed into strong arms and hands and she felt them gently lowering her to the deck. As her eyes shot open she looked at the compassionate and worried Major Joseph Philipis, the intelligence officer on her staff, trying to talk to her. She saw lips moving but heard no words…

There was a buzz and a _pop_ and finally she could hear.

General Krios was also kneeling by her side.

"Get some water and the doctor!" She heard Major Philipis shout. "Sir, Admiral! Can you hear me?"

Makos, breathing rapidly, shoved her body away from Philipis and Krios and frantically checked her hands for blood. She struggled away from them and kicked Philipis in the gut- he staggered back- but Krios pinned her.

"Admiral!" Krios yelled with wide and almost crazy or frantic eyes. Makos suddenly stopped shaking like a switch had been flipped, closed her eyes and was able to regain control of her breathing. "Admiral, please, something happened, the staff…!"

"Admiral!" Philipis's word was hard and his tone fiery. "Admiral! The Cylons haven't engaged the Spartoi. We lost contact with half the commanders in the fleet, half the commanders wearing CRIBS are non-responsive!" The major told her.

She looked at him, her expression blank, confused. Kessandra Makos blinked the glaze still lingering in her eyes away. The strong, steely glitter to those amber-hued eyes returned. Her headache was gone and she could feel her breathing slow… she looked down and slowly pulled out of Krios's hard grip and smoothed down her tunic.

Her head suddenly cocked towards Philipis and her amber-hued eyes focused. Her head swiveled left and right, searching for the man… her eyes locked in on him. She needed answers and part of her mind was still processing what that Cylon had said.

"Status of the Cylon fleet?" She bellowed to her operations officer. He said it was still on DRADIS but unengaged. "Holy frak… Graystone!" She growled, pushing herself up and allowing Philipis and a still-recovering Krios to help lift her. They steadied her on their feet. "Major…" her eyes narrowed to slits and she looked over his shoulder. He was almost trying to block her. "Iason!" She saw her chief of staff laying limp on the ground, two medics and another crewmember hunched over him.

She shoved Philipis to the side and squirmed out of Krios's grip on her tricep. Makos was over by her chief of staff's side not a second later. Kneeling next to him she looked at the medics for an explanation before seeing the CRIB, cracked in two at the nose piece, lying on the deck. Her eyes were on fire as she sprung back up and stalked over to Graystone.

"What the frak happened?" She cursed at him, throwing her hand back and pointing at her chief of staff. Others were unconscious and being tended to by medics and the ship's doctors; Rear Admiral Toles, Admiral Brinks, and Admiral Leos among the flag officers and Majors Hendricks and Foraker, Colonel Stamos, and Commanders Melas and Onassis. "Major Philipis, what is the condition of the fleet? I want recall orders issued to all Cylon vessels to jump to emergency standby coordinates immediately. They're to shut down and proceed-"

"Admiral," interrupted Graystone from across the command console, "what happened?"

"I don't know. But a fraking Cylon appeared and said the worlds would burn." Her head swiveled over to the DRADIS techs. "Do we have ID on those ships which jumped in?"

"One moment, sir…" the DRADIS tech frowned. "We're still decrypting whatever it was the… ID confirmed as Caprican warships believed lost during the Second Battle of Sagittaron and Tauron and Gemenese Pact warships." The tech tapped a few buttons and leaned over to a young woman by his side, pointed at his console, and she nodded back. "We can confirm one of the Pact ships as the _Gurin_, a cruiser converted to Spartoi command six years ago and present at Second Sagittaron, sir."

Major Philipis was by her side again. "Sir, we also received reports that other command staffs were incapacitated on dozens of other ships…" he frowned and pointed at the DRADIS. "And the Spartoi and Cylons aren't doing anything. The only ones fighting are a few forward units we deployed as defense batteries from Crovus orbit, sir." His jaws clenched.

Whatever she saw it didn't feel right. This operation as blown whatever had happened. And something was happening with the Cylons and Spartoi.

"Dr. Graystone." Makos turned her undivided attention to him. From the corner of her eyes she saw Commander Corman stand back up, helped by medics, and while glad couldn't rush over to make sure he was alright. Not right now. "Are the Cylons capable of rebelling?"

Everyone in ear shot froze.

Dr. Graystone among them.

There had been too many bad science fiction movies in the last decades of Cylons rebelling or Spartoi. The theme worked off a meme in the Colonial movie industry of the robots overthrowing their masters and engaging in wars of genocide and conquest. Graystone had assured them all this was impossible. He had ordered prototypes to take rifles and shoot their own MCP- robotic suicide.

The military itself had conducted its own randomized trial on dozens of each batch of Cylons delivered to make sure they would always follow lawful authority. And they had… for the most part. A few hiccups were expected here and there when the military and war industries had to rush out millions and millions of Cylons a month to replace losses…

"Admiral… I don't understand…" Graystone was cautious, weary of what she was implying.

She held up a hand and cut him off. "I want a blunt answer. Are they capable of rebelling?" Makos quickly closed the distance to Graystone with half a dozen long, elegant strides and was nose to nose with him. "Doctor."

"I…" he stuttered, "I… no, no, Admiral. We tested them." He was frustrated and stepped back and threw his hands onto his hips. "We tested them and they can't be hacked or turned against us. Those are artificial… well, brains, basically!" His jaw clenched. "They are artificially sentient- they make decisions based on variables- but they are _still_ subservient to _us_!"

As if the gods wanted to curse Graystone they could not have chosen a better moment. The DRADIS blared and beeped erratically.

"Radiological signatures… oh gods!"

On the DRADIS screen nuclear missiles and conventional missiles all lashed out and streaked across the nothingness towards dozens of area defense stations around Corvus and to even more on the planet. DRADIS was detecting massive nuclear explosions on the planetoid and space-based nuclear detonations as Cylon _and_ Spartoi ships fired on Corvus's defenses.

"Sir!" Major Philipis got the attention of Makos. He had an ear bug and was pressing it firmly in his ear. "Sir… interference is heavy but it sounds like the Pact…"

"Pact ships moving in to engage…" the DRADIS tech trailed off after interrupted the major. Admiral Makos shot him a stern look. "Pact ships have firing solutions on Cylon and Spartoi ships and planetoid defense batteries have firing solutions on Spartoi ships…"

"Sir, wireless chatter about Spartoi on Corvus attacking… attacking Pact location…?"

"Sir, I'm seeing explosions on Pact ships… they look internal, sir, no missiles or kinetic rounds fired yet."

It clicked for Makos. That dark feeling she'd felt since the blood drenched Cylon had made its proclamation was confirmed.

Her mind raced and as irrational as her orders might sound she said them anyway as calm as she could.

"All Cylons aboard ships are to be destroyed immediately…." She praised the gods Cylons were left deactivated unless boarded or under threat of boarding. "And-"

"Admiral?" It was General Krios. "What the frak-"

"Just do it!" She hissed. There weren't that many aboard and if she was wrong, she was wrong. She'd fraking pay for the damn Centurions herself, but if she was right she needed to secure the safety of the fleet first.

That transmission had done something. She was sure of it. Luckily a Cylon couldn't receive any transmissions unless active and with the ship's Centurions powered down… she closed her eyes and mouthed a thanks to the gods, especially Zeus and even more so to the ship's namesake goddess.

"FTL jumps detected! Spartoi and Cylon fleets are, they're gone, sir!" The DRADIS tech yelled.

Makos confirmed with her DRADIS display.

The blood, the real blood, drained from her face. The Spartoi and Cylon fleet was powerful here but… but a fleet… no, a fleet wasn't a victory. The robots, the toasters had told her their plan, they had told it to her in some twisted, sick boast… could robots even do that? Makos shook her head. It didn't matter. She knew where they were going. They were going to smash the small defense fleets around the home worlds. They were going to burn the Colonies.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Kind of nervous on this chapter. Let me know what you all think on this one. I have a bit of a surprise at the end which I hope sort of links this back to a certain character in the main series.

I had a few concepts in here I might use later in some different stories. I'm wondering how everyone like/didn't like the changes to Caprica and the backstory with the Cylons and Spartoi? Let me know. Please enjoy and thanks for reading! I don't plan on doing more chapters but I might in the future.

Thank you for reading the short story.

* * *

**Chapter Three**

**Battleship **_**Pyrrhus**_

**In Orbit over Giedi**

"Ah, the joys of another night of sitting on one's ass and doing frak-all…" Captain Diana 'Medusa' Doukos rapped her fingers across the top of her helmet. "Sure is a lot of crew up." She wrinkled her nose and sidestepped out of the way of a visibly irritated major splitting his attention between his tablet computer and the crowds.

Medusa was quite a bit shorter than the average Caprican citizen and had to be extra careful watching her step in the sometimes dangerous and always bustling corridors of a Caprican battleship. Her grandparents had emigrated from Aquaria and her parents were full blooded Aquarians and unfortunately she'd inherited their short stature. She was able to make up for her height by being fairly well-built and she often relied on her Pyramid training as a Weaver to sidestep or dodge sailors not paying attention.

"Meh, it's not too bad, Medusa," countered Lieutenant Adrian 'Plucky' Xenos. He dug into the thigh pocket of his olive drab colored pressure suit and produced a book for his CO's viewing pleasure. "Not when you have something worthwhile to pass the time.

Medusa gave it a look and rolled her eyes. "Just don't go around brandishing that crap."

"It's just a book."

"'It's just a book' he says." Medusa said to the air and now empty corridor in front of them. "Yeah, it's just a Tauron book by one of their most noted Tauron supremacists!" Nuzzling her helmet under the crook of her right arm and wiggling the fingers of her now free left hand, got Plucky to hand the book over. "Simon Ricci…" she scowled at the cover. "_The War of Angels… _j_ust_ be careful with some of this. You don't want to be seen as a sympathizer." She slapped it back on his chest and increased her pace and left Plucky behind her.

The two rounded a bend in the corridor, the sounds of the flight deck now echoing towards them, and Plucky caught up with his squadron CO.

"Anyway, what else do we do when we're stuck in a cockpit for six hours in those claustrophobic tubes?"

Medusa shrugged. She pulled out a folded computer sheet. "I've got about a week's worth of paperwork to catch up on. Those are the joys of being a squadron CO…" she twisted and eyed the young lieutenant next to her. "Speaking of commands, have you decided yet? Your thousandth landing is coming up… usually the pilots decide if they want to go career by then."

"I don't know, Medusa. There's my girlfriend-"

"-always seems to be someone," she scoffed.

"Well, she wants kids. And I've been in since the start. How much longer can this war go on anyway? Once it's over I'm gonna head back to university and do some graduate work. My brother works for one of the pharmaceutical companies and says if I get an MBA he'll hire me as a drug rep."

Medusa chuckled and shaking her head, gently slapped him on the back of the head. "A drug rep? You're one of the best pilots we have. Twelve confirmed kills and fifteen confirmed birds. And you're going to sell drugs to doctors? That sounds incredibly _boring_."

"Well, sir, if the war ends soon like the rumors say, what are you going to do?"

The two rounded a second corner. Medusa swiped her access card to a side compartment off the main flight deck and let Plucky go in first. They checked in with the Landing Deck Officer and initialed besides the Vipers they'd be sitting in for the next six hours and headed out onto the deck.

"What am I going to do?" Medusa asked after mulling the question around for a few minutes. "I'm going to stay in the Fleet. When we win there's talk of integrating our forces more heavily with the allies. Plus if we occupy the Pact worlds we'll need everyone we can get. Just because the Pact surrenders doesn't mean we're done." She looked over at her wingman and hummed a thought. "They might stop gap you."

"The last thing we need is some insurgency." He leaned over. "Garrison force for what, like twenty billion? That's going to be insane and expensive."

"Rods from the Gods handle those pretty well," Medusa mused, "it's hard to be an insurgent when you're getting bombed from orbit. And Cylons… I mean, look," she jerked her chin forward and motioned at one of the chrome toasters standing sentry duty, "what sorry frak gives a shit if a Cylon gets shot up? Building another is cheap compared to training a soldier."

They walked towards their Vipers. Medusa was swinging her left arm back and forth while she rested her right on the butt of her sidearm. Then all hell broke loose. Someone came over the wireless and declared condition one. And someone started shooting up the hanger bay.

* * *

**Battleship **_**Othyros**_

**In High Orbit over Caprica**

Trying to sleep and failing, Rear Admiral Robert Drake had assembled his uniform and walked towards the CIC. His ship was on condition two, like all ships during wartime, so there were plenty of crewmen awake and hustling through the ship during the early morning hours. Very few, if any, knew the reason why their fleet commander was restless and roaming the dreary gunmetal-colored corridors so early.

A pair of crewmen stepped aside, snapped their heels, and in the traditional salute dating back over four thousand years, balled their right hand into a fist and brought it across their chest and slightly to the left of the heart. Drake returned the salute and nodded and threw his hands behind his back, pushed back his shoulders as the pride for his crew flowed through him, and continued to the CIC.

The same sequence of salutes was followed by the two Marine sentries. He produced his photo ID and prox card for the two, who used a handheld scanner to make sure he was authorized- military SOP, the president of Caprica himself would be forced to do the same- and with a snap and a hiss the magnetic locks on the armored hatch to CIC disengaged. A low whine indicated the motors required to move the hatch into its recessed alcove had activated. Drake stepped through and quickly surveyed his domain with a sweep of his eyes from the left to the right.

"Admiral on deck!" The Officer of the Day, Captain Herodotus Cetus called out.

The ambient buzzing of the CIC, staffed around the clock with dozens, came to a muted hush. Each man or woman stiffened in their seat or came to attention if their duties permitted. The OOD and Tactical Relief Officer, a young and short female lieutenant with shoulder-length blonde hair, Sarah Dameskinos, walked up, came to attention, and saluted.

"As you were," he declared and returned the two salutes.

The CIC was fairly typical of Caprican battleships. Slightly off center were three large command consoles. Their translucent surfaces had touch-interface screens for tactical and strategic displays. Above the displays were a half dozen monitors devoted to DRADIS and a half dozen more devoted to ship rosters and who was out flying.

Arrayed around the consoles were additional plots on the sides of the CIC and computer terminals. Between navigation, tactical, communication, DRADIS, and flight ops there were about thirty men and women manning posts. Another twenty to thirty were stationed behind them on the upper two tiers of the CIC to provide support and handle more mundane fleet issues. Maybe another ten were constantly in motion moving papers or comp sheets around or ferrying reports from one section of the ship to another when hand delivery was required.

Two Marines stood guard at each of the two hatches to the CIC. Two more stood inside near the tactical boards in the closest corner to the command consoles and two more stood watch at the top tier.

"Anything going on out there?" Drake asked, motioning for the TRO and OOD to follow and stepping up to the tactical DRADIS display his belt buckle clinked on the metal ledge of the display as he leaned forward to get a view of the fleet and read his ship's status. He groaned to himself when he saw half a dozen men and women in harness chairs with their CRIBS on. "It looks pretty fraking quiet." He kept his eyes on the officers with the modified holoband visors on.

It wasn't that he disliked the technology because his whole career had seen one technological innovation after another fostered on the Fleet. CRIBs and Cylons were just two of the changes to have occurred in his decades of service. The Fleet he had originally commissioned in might have been similar in appearances, basic designs of warships stayed somewhat static, but the innards of the ships were much different. _Othyros_, a technological marvel compared to ships of the past, could operate with a crew of less than thirty-five hundred.

He glanced up at the half dozen DRADIS monitors. From left to right they presented a more general, strategic outlook of local space to a more concentrated, tactical display which showed only the fleet and a few hundred k-klicks in diameter around _Othryos_.

"It doesn't seem like much is going on at the moment, sir…" Cetus said, frowning, "we just have some of the usual traffic. There's a big convoy- 095- with a shipment of Cylons and machinery to Ragnar which is getting ready to jump in the next few hours. Cruiser Squadron Nine-Seven," Cetus nodded at the DRADIS and the yellow blips for the convoy, "should be heading out soon. The assault landing ships are holding steady in orbit…" Cetus narrowed his eyes. "What the frak…"

Captain Cetus's head snapped back and then forward, doing a double take. The light from the DRADIS consoles glittered and sparkled in his deep brown eyes as they began to widen.

Lt. Dameskinos and Admiral Drake, who'd been studying other DRADIS displays, not watching but listening, gave him a look.

"Sir?" the TRO asked, sidestepping to see what the navigator and temporary OOD was looking at. She hummed a throaty and curious note as the blips on the DRADIS rearranged to something odd and out of place. Dameskinos bit down on her lip. "Look at that." She pushed out her chin at the overhead display, the second to the right, giving a more detailed picture of the event in question.

"Sir…" Cetus ignored her and addressed the admiral, "Sir… there's a strange DRADIS contact at extreme range… and the… what the frak? We've got some unusual movement in the Zone, sir. There's also an unidentified ship at extreme DRADIS range."

Drake was already filtering the DRADIS displays for anything abnormal. He had decades in the service and years aboard ships ranging from destroyers to these magnificent battleships. Within a second his well-trained eyes had already picked up the problem.

To a casual observed nothing unusual would have been evident. DRADIS plotted little blips with a small set of three numbers indicating range, distance, and relative location. Some plots were slightly larger or smaller than the other to aide in depth perception. A massive collection of small blips, representing the Ragnar convoy, was just one of two oddities present.

The problem was in the Military Orbit and Demarcation Zone. Military traffic only. It changed constantly to prevent ambush and currently it was in a geosynchronous orbit between Caprica and Geidi, the primary moon of the blue and green marble below.

Suddenly the subtle changes began to become clearer. And the problems escalated. The Ragnar Convoy 095 blips began to move off from their high orbits. They began separating, as if beginning an FTL jump.

"Convoy 095 and the assault landing ships are changing their orbit?" Drake questioned. "Those things are filled with Cylons for our invasion… Chief Caslet, get me Orbital Control-" while he'd been watching the DRADIS his right hand had grasped the handle for the wireless receiver. He was about to request a channel to the two commanders of that convoy.

And why hadn't Control messaged _Othyros?_ The commander in charge of Control knew it was his responsibility to inform the flagship of the planetary defense fleet to any changes in convoy debarkation schedules.

"Sir!" The communications tech, Chief Caslet, yelled out. "Sir, there are wireless signals flooding in on all channels, sir. It's, I don't know, it sounds like someone's speaking… but there's something embedded in the transmission… it's garbled."

"Speakers!" Drake ordered. He rested his hands on the command console and leaned forward. His ears flickered back as distorted speech became clear. "Clear that up!" He barked at the crackling. There was a rhythmic pulse

"…_As the Gods overthrew the Titans, so has Man overthrown the Gods, but when Man visits his Sins upon his Children, how shall he be repaid?"_

Everyone in the CIC had stopped working. Some were staring at him for answers, hopeful the lone flag officers knew what was happening while others stared at the DRADIS monitors and each other.

"What the frak is this?" Drake demanded. "Wake up the command staff, captain." He glared his annoyance at the OOD. "Get me a source for the transmission and launch Vipers to intercept whatever fraking ship is screwing with our wireless frequencies!"

"Sir," the Chief said, "we're getting com traffic over the laser net that the wireless frequencies are all being jammed with that question over and over, sir. Communications is attempting a work around and attempting to triangulate."

Lt. Dameskinos walked over to the comm. station and scooping up and ear bud from the Chief, brushed back a strand of her and settled it over her ear.

"I want Vipers on standby, prepare to bring the ship to condition one… alert planetary defense headquarters. Bounce a laser off the satellites if you have to." The admiral picked up the receiver on the side of the command console. "Give me a high powered, wide-band saturated transmission capability." Drake glared at the received and his com chief, not out of anger or frustration at him, but the situation. He received a nod from the older enlisted man. "Attention transmitting vessel. This is Rear Admiral Robert Drake onboard _Othryos_. You will cease transmissions immediately and prepare to be boarded. Interfering with military transmissions during a time of war carries the death penalty. Cease and desist-"

The wireless popped and screeched.

The questions stopped.

"_Admiral Drake_. _How shall he be repaid? The Children of Man will be repaid in their own blood."_

Drake's face contorted to one of pure shock, confusion, and anger. What the frak was going on? Who in the name of Zeus's cock was doing this? Not even the Pact planets could blanket all their wireless frequencies like this. There was encryption, modulation, the works to prevent interference and jamming like this. Who the frak? The Pact didn't transmit anything but a simple request for surrender- Tauron 'honor'- before attacking. Riddles?

He pulled the receiver away from his ear and just stared at it. Drake was debating whether to slam the black corded phone receiver down and smash it into its holder or press it back against his ear and yell his fraking heart out at the frakers.

He slowly set it down.

"Sir!" The DRADIS officer yelled. "Convoy 095… they're reporting gunfire aboard their vessels… I'm also receiving reports of gunfire aboard the landing assault ships, sir…"

"I want condition one set throughout the fleet. All vessels are to form up. Alert High Command. Have our Marines ready to deploy to those ships reporting gunfire. Relay orders to all Cylon defense stations to begin launching Raiders and proceed to planetary defense-"

He'd been relaying his orders calmly, concisely, but the DRADIS erupted into an almost panicky presentation of hundreds of blips and it flashed red and crew to alert the DRADIS operators and command staff to the sudden appearance of a massive fleet.

The DRADIS consoles erupted into a staccato of frantic beeps and gurgles. The left-most screen seemed to bathe itself in green blips as nearly two hundred Cylon ships jumped in.

"Cylon fleet has jumped… back, sir. Range at thirty k-klicks and approaching fast!"

"Set condition one immediately." His fist hit the console. "And get our patrols over there and hail the fraking ships. Use signal lamps if you have to!"

Lieutenant Dameskinos was furiously reading the tactical readouts and compiling the reports and summaries of the last ten minutes for the admiral as she watched Commander Grace Mesides rushed into CIC. She finished buckling the last button on her tunic and flattening it, reported in to Admiral Drake.

"Admiral, commander, the Cylon fleet is accelerating. There also seems to be activity on the automated defense platform sir…" her left eye narrowed in a mix of stunned disbelief and confused acknowledgement. "Sir…" she pressed a finger to an ear bud she'd linked up with the communication's stations. "We're getting high level encrypted messages sent up from High Command via Secure Net comms sir. Decrypting now."

"Commander," Drake turned to the woman as she stepped up beside him, "take control of the situation here. Captain Cetus, update the commander and get the COs of the task groups on the horn immediately and standby. Comm. send the priority message to this console."

"My gods!" Dameskinos's mouth was agape and she'd frozen. With the Admiral in front of her she shook herself back. "Sir… secure transmission indicates the Cylons have begun attacking our military bases on Caprica, sir!"

"Throw it on speakers!"

"_-Gods… Cylon attac- massive casualties, repeat, Cylons attacking everything in site!"_

_This is Cap City emer- responders… someone fraking figure out what's going on, reports of Cylons going crazy and murdering-"_

"_Open fi- the Cylo- fire on the Cylons the fra- Cylons!"_

"_This is an emergency planetary alert message. ATTENTION. This is an emergency planetary alert message. ATTENTION. All planetary military units and civil defense units are to report for duty immediately. ATTENTION. Consider all Cylons to be hostile. ATTENTION. Consider all Cylons to be hostile. Deadly force is authorized. All Cylons are to be considered hostile…"_

Everyone in CIC was standing or sitting ramrod straight. He shut down communications by angrily stalking to the comm. Station and jamming his fist onto the control panel. He glared at nothing, his eyes glazing over. Then loud and obnoxious proximity beeps, DRADIS alarms, and shrill alerts began wailing through CIC…

"Radiological alarms!" Someone called

"Missile locks from Cylon fleet!" Another DRADIS tech yelled at the top of his lungs

"Energy buildups- convoy's jumping!" Navigation reported

"Raider squadrons launchings!" The TRO shouted over her shoulder…

CIC erupted in a mass of confusion as the top borders to the DRADIS screens, all screen in CIC, flashed a red rectangle warning of incoming ordnance. Everyone braced to impact as Drake ordered the defensive batteries online. Even as the subtle vibration of the turrets were felt deep in the bowels of CIC and as they felt the rumblings of the anti-missile missiles and proximity flak charges being spat out into space around them too many missiles were in bound for the flagship…

* * *

**Battleship** _**Pyrrhus**_

Medusa threw herself to the deck and grabbed Plucky's collar, yanking him down on top of her chest. His chin hit her right in the solar plexus and she groaned loudly as the air rushed from her lungs. She rolled him off and went to a knee. In one swift motion she had her sidearm out, safety off, and was ready to fire at whoever was shooting at them.

She began to stand back up and fire. Medusa felt she could at least distract the robot until the Marines got there. But she ducked down as half a dozen bullets flew at her, with more shooting past, and two deck hand knuckle draggers going down.

The staccato of the gunfire from the Centurion's assault rifle and the wet tearing of human flesh was like nails on chalkboards and sent a cold wave of fear racing down her back and throughout her body.

With her back pressed against it she checked on Plucky, who was coming to a knee with his own sidearm out. She thanked the gods that they hadn't been killed- yet.

"The Centurion's gone fraking balls up, Plucky." She managed to stay calm but her voice cracked. She looked down and saw her hand shake, but used the other to grab it and calm her nerves. She'd been shot at dozens, maybe a hundred times in space but being shot at while flying a Viper was a lot different than being shot at in a hanger bay from ten meters away.

It just seemed so much more _personal_.

"What the frak!" Plucky yelled, sidearm in hand and back on his knees. He looked around the side of the forklift. "It's gone fraking crazy!"

"No, look!" Medusa pointed.

The Centurion closest to them was going wild, killing everyone it could. Some helpless knuckle dragger ran by and instead of wasting ammunition, grabbed her around the neck, squeezed, and then released. Her body fell to the deck like a ragdoll.

There were two Centurions in the hanger deck as security. Both were shooting everything.

"On my mark, shoot," she ordered. "Mark!"

She stood up, exposing only her upper torso as she shot at the Centurion. Plucky leaned to the right of the forklift. Their bullets dinged off the armor. One somehow hit between the plates and black fluid gushed from an elbow joint. The mechanical hand spasmed but the Centurion released its sub machinegun from its two handed grip and using only one continued to fire. A blade ejected out of the damaged forearm gauntlet.

"Down!"

A hail of bullets tore into the forklift and Medusa grabbed Plucky again as the rounds pinged and shredded the unarmored piece of equipment. She and Plucky made themselves as small as possible to keep from being shot by the metal monster.

She heard a magazine hit the deck and she and Plucky popped back up and fired and ran towards the hatch. Their bullets still did nothing.

The two pilots slammed into the bulkhead and went back-flat against the metal.

On the flight deck dozens of Raptors and Vipers and other attack craft were being prepred for launch or serviced and the crews all lay dead around them. Medusa easily counted forty, fifty dead. Just on what she could see.

The Centurion began moving off towards the munitions elevators.

She fired at the Centurion, furious it would betray them and praying to the gods she could get its attention for just a second, just long enough for the ship's Marine compliment to get down here. Emptying the rest of her magazine into the toaster, the foggy black smoke trail of her bullets and the brass on the deck was the only evidence she'd even fired. She had one last shot and she stuttered but breathed in and out and dropped the line of sight low and fired.

The bullet smacked the Centurion in the back of its calf pistols. It buckled slightly at the unexpected shot and turned and fired at her. As she began to duck she grinned and her eyes were fire as she saw the black lubricant squirt out of the Centurion like blood.

But it had systems to compensate. Redundancies. That's why they were so feared on the battlefield. A soldier couldn't stop an artery from bleeding, could not will themselves to ignore the pain and shock when a limb was blown off. A Cylon could. They fought until their mechanical heart- a battery- or their cold, calculating brain- the MCP- was destroyed.

She fell back behind cover and to a knee to reload. Medusa hit the magazine release, it clanged down on the deck, and she slapped a new one in quickly.

The pilot she had distracted it, just long enough. It had a mission, but it had to protect itself to carry out that mission. It couldn't get to the ready munitions stores below the deck unless it kept itself from being disabled.

Maybe ten, fifteen seconds had elapsed between her small victory- she heard the screams of another pair of knuckle draggers go down as bullets ripped into flesh and shattered bone- over bleeding the metal monster and the time it took her to reload. Medusa mouthed a quick prayer that Athena would look over her and she readied herself to fire at it again.

"Medusa!" She felt Plucky's arm as she was going to shoot again. "Wait, the Marines!"

She looked back and let herself be pulled down by her wingman. Almost a dozen Marines in their digital camouflage, decked in chest and leg armor covering the thighs and shins, burst out from the central hatch down the flight pod. They fanned out, with half hugging the far wall and half the bulkhead closest to the ship.

They went to a knee and fired on the Centurion, the bullets pushed it back. It leapt behind a Raptor and its bullets tore the throat out of a Marine. He collapsed to the deck, gargling and sprawling blood from dual severed carotids. Before the medic could even reach him he was dead. Two buddies pulled his lifeless corpse from the deck behind cover in a vain, and very human effort to save him.

Cylons knew how to fight. A wounded enemy took out that man and at least two, maybe three of his buddies. They knew humans would risk their lives to save one of their comrades in arms even if that man was dancing on the tip of Death's needle.

The Marine's return fire was just as ineffective against Raptor armor as it was Centurion. And if they fired a grenade they could ignite the tyllium fuel. Luckily the tanks were armored so not even a Cylon could puncture them short of an anti-material rifle.

Four Marines moved up on the far bulkhead, each leapfrogging and covering the other. On the other side five did the same. Three were in the rear.

Medusa made eye contact with the lead Marine who signaled for her and Plucky to stay down. With the professionals here she was more than happy to oblige. Her skill was in a fighter. She'd hit ace two months after the war had started. With a Viper's canons and her HUD she could hit anything. With a pistol she had qualified as marksman. Barely. She chalked up bleeding the Cylon to luck.

The ship suddenly lurched and the lights dimmed. The Cylon jumped from its hiding spot behind the Raptor and gunned down two Marines. It aimed low and swept at the legs and lower torso under the belt line and groin, where the armor wasn't covering. Two Marines fell before the rest could open fire. A third fell as the Centurion wobbled back.

Armor piercing rounds with micro-explosive cores penetrated the Cylons armor. Under the withering hail of bullets it went down but took a fourth with it.

Marines from the opposite side of the hanger could be heard rushing down, their boots plodding down the deck. They yelled out to their comrades who'd come up and saved Plucky and Medusa. The other Centurion at the opposite end of the bay had been destroyed.

Once again a voice came over the PA system sounding condition one.

"…_the Cylons are rebelling…"_ was all Medusa needed to hear as she grabbed plucky and rushed their Vipers, waiting for them in the tubes on hot standby.

* * *

"Frak Plucky, bank!" Medusa growled into her wireless. Her Viper jostled as a Raider fragment hti the wing and her warning lights flashed and alarms blared. Her left hand expertly, almost reflexively shot out from the throttle and smashed the buttons to dim the alarms. "Red Squadron form up on me immediately. _Raptors_, form up behind!"

She brought the nose of her Viper down three degrees and her helmet head flashed green to red and her thumb gently tapped the 'fire' button. In the span of seconds hundreds of high explosive, armor piercing rounds kicked out from the dual canons on her wing stubs and speed towards their prey. Grinning, her eyes narrowed as she silently cursed the Cylon Raider as the bullets hit, sparked a magnificent gold-red, and penetrated.

The tyllium tanks exploded and the Raider was eviscerated. It split right down the midline as the cockpit and engine mounts blew. The large, oval-shaped wings twisted and turned as they lost acceleration and folded in on each other. They smacked and flew in opposite directions.

Medusa checked her HUD quickly and confirmed with a quick DRADIS scan. Behind her her battleship was opening fire with its monstrous guns and plentiful missile batteries and annihilating a wing of Raiders which had swooped in.

"Holy shit!" One of her pilots cursed.

DRADIS flared with the little circular blips indicating missile fire. _Pyrrhus_ fired a broadside which weaved in and out of her squadron and Blue squadron, ratting some of her Vipers as they used the Vipers as a sort of makeshift DRADIS decoys.

The missiles leapt by and stabbed at a wing of Raiders. Nearly thirty exploded which still left half for Red and Blue squadrons.

"_Medusa, they're all yours. Engage Wing Designate Alpha Constellation Seven and wait for further orders."_

"_Roger,"_ she responded and clicked from the wireless channel back to her squads. _"Let's do this_._ By the numbers people, stay frosty."_

She signaled for the first strike when she shot off a small drone from her undercarriage.

Her Vipers banked, revealing three Raptors which had been hiding in their DRADIS shadows. The blocky sandy-colored craft were laden with missile pods, chain guns, and light anti-ship missiles. The three fired in unison half their missile pod stores.

The white contrails of tyllium exhaust marked their swerve and almost random path as they corkscrewed and careened left and right and up and down until they blew apart another fifteen Raiders.

Medusa and Plucky were able to anticipate each other's moves and maneuvers. The two saw a trio of Raider skimming one of the Caprican heavy cruisers, a squat, oval shaped vessel with gun batteries running down the spine, and no Vipers of Asps to cover its air defense zones. The Raiders moved in for an attack run on the cruiser's main fire control sections and DRADIS zones.

The two angled the noses of their Vipers and Plucky had tone for missiles. He fired twice while Medusa tapped out a stream of glowing red HEAP rounds.

The glowing rounds obliterated one Raider's cockpit while one of Plucky's missile swerved up intot he belly of a second. The second missile missed but activated it proximity fuse and shrapnel nicked the engine of the third, punching hundreds of tiny holes into the black and blocky aerodyne engines. White exhaust leaked from the engine and the Raider jerked left and right as the Centurion pilots attempted to regain control.

It slowed and the two Vipers overshot their target. Medusa pulled back on the throttle and jammed the pedals, throwing the Viper into a hard six turn. She had too much momentum to stop from doing a complete three-sixty but as her battle reflexes kicked in and time seemed to slow her thumb snapped down the trigger at the right moment and dozens of HEAP rounds were spat out furiously from her chain canons and into the back of the Raider.

It blew apart in a magnificently short-lived red and orange fireball.

She banked left, two of her wing mates following and they opened fire on a landing assault ship as it descended through the atmosphere. The heavy armored hull was thick and their HEAP rounds did no more damage than a fist striking a concrete wall. Medusa, Plucky, and the second wing mate, Roundhouse swept over the ship and gunned for the engines.

"_Roundhouse, watch-"_ Medusa was cut off mid warning by cracking static as the Cylons modulated their jamming frequencies. They were too far from their countermeasure ships. Her laser com optics were trying to get a lock but Roundhouse was weaving and dodging debris.

Suddenly the cobalt blue tracers of the Raiders slammed into his Viper, blew off the starboard wing, and his Viper careened out of control, dived into the assault ship, hit a DRADIS dish, and then went spinning into space for half a kilometer before exploding.

"_Othyros to all ships, Othyros to all ships_, _the Cylons are maneuvering to bombard the surface. All vessels are to disengage and attack the following designate Cylon ships!"_

Medusa clicked an affirmative into her mic.

"_Frak, Medusa…"_

"_What is it, Plucky?"_

"_Everything going down… Raptors just sent a burst transmission… the fraking Cylons on the surface are killing everything…"_ Medusa saw him raise his nose up fifteen degrees and fire on a Raider, clipping the wing, "_and my brother and sister live in Cap City… Cylon's largest factory is right outside, there's over a hundred thousand Cylons-"_

"_Plucky, we'll figure it out, keep tight."_ She flicked the com for Blue Squadron. "_Alright Blues, formation delta one."_

Nine Vipers formed up behind Medusa in a rough three dimensional diamond and counting herself and plucky they numbered eleven. Her force had been whittled down from a squadron of twenty of the advanced and deadly Vipers and five Raptor gunships to eleven and three after less than twenty minutes of fighting. Her guns were red-lining and almost out of ammunition and communications were spotty and unreliable. The battle nets connecting Vipers and Raptors and Asps to their mother ships were down. The flight interface bands, the pilot version of a CRIB were useless after the Cylons crashed their systems. They were having to go on _verbal_ orders and visual DRADIS markers!

Medusa's lip curled up in a hateful snarl as she saw a white flash on the planet below. The Cylons were using their tactical nukes not to destroy warships but to bombard the surface. They were killing millions, tens of millions of innocents… and as her hatred couldn't have been any stronger it was as if the Fates had cursed her, as if they were watching her rage and laughing.

The Corithian Isthmus, the most distinguishable landmass on Caprica, a 'U' shaped piece of land connecting the two largest continents of Caprica, was stuttered with a staccato of nuclear blasts. It was where her family had lived for generations, all of them, and they were all dead.

* * *

**Battlestar Othyros**

Admiral Drake braced himself on the command console as a stuttering wave of missiles broke through the battleship's point defense guns and fighter air defenses. Massive anti-ship missiles slammed into armor and sent in their cores of molten hot metal into the belly of the behemoth war machine. Secondary explosions ripped through the starboard compartments and Drake forward only to be shot back as something _big_ exploded back. He was thrown off his feet and landed back to chest into Lt. Dameskinos and the two stumbled back and slammed into Commander Mesides.

Everything in CIC was flickering, buzzing, or filled with static.

The admiral pushed himself off the two women and barked out, "All PD batteries are to target missiles heading _only_ towards the planet!" He wiped his forehead and seeing a thick line of blood on his palm shook it off, splatting it in small droplets all across the deck and onto the command console. "Damage reports!" He turned to help the two women up but dropped Dameskinos as pain shot up through his shoulder, forcing him to a knee.

"Admiral!" The TRO was on him and helping him stand. The ship shook again but her wide stance helped balance to two and keep them from falling. "Are you okay, sir?"

He grimaced and looked over, baring his teeth as the agonizing pain from a dislocated left shoulder shot through his chest. It was like someone was sticking a knife right into his heart and ripping it up through his neck to his ear.

"I'll be fine. I need a damage report, lieutenant." He snapped.

Drake shuttered back to the command console, stepping over the body of a dead sailor, no older that twenty-five or twenty-six, with deep lacerations on his forehead and a piece of shrapnel in his gut. He gazed around the CIC and saw the carnage of the Cylon attack and the pain vanished from his shoulder as he realized they couldn't keep this up. _Othyros_ was between the planet and the majority of the Cylon fleet, blocking the nukes and kinetic Rods from the Gods from destroying the cities beneath. But if a third of his men and women in CIC was too injured to man their stations… and he saw two medics slouched at the hatch unconscious the damage to the outer hull must be extensive.

There wasn't enough time for his own pain as thousands of his sailors died on the battleship and millions more died outside in that black and barren vacuum and on the planet below. He grabbed the edge of the console with his still working right hand and pulled himself towards it as he took a step.

The outline of the battleship was almost all red or yellow. A hundred small squares indicated the separate damage control compartments within the battleship for DC crews to man. Half of them were flashing red, a quarter yellow, and some even within the deepest bowels of the ship were yellow. A few outer compartments were green and still structurally intact but for how much longer?

"Get group sixteen to reinforce eighteen and nineteen. Have them skim the atmosphere and use the gravity to push them to intercept the Cylon forces heading for Cap City!" Drake heard Commander Mesides yelled over the roar and screams. "Sir," she was facing the admiral now, "there's been nuclear detonations on over thirty cities in the north eastern hemisphere…" she looked at him and back at DRADIS and down at the read outs on the command console. "Casualties are heavy. Only a handful of our ground forces mobilized in time before the Cylons hit them. We're still ten minutes from receiving reinforcement from the other side of the planet, sir."

Drake gritted his teeth. "We don't have ten minutes. We don't have five." He glared at the DRADIS. "Our fighters are all scattered to fraking Tartarus and back and we've lost our screens… and frak…"

Neither Mesides nor Drake could see what was happening outside the battleship. The blips on DRADIS were so impersonal. They were just blips. They only saw a blip as it descended into the atmosphere and began falling… the computer having already calculated its course; Parthion, a city of nine million.

The heavy cruiser _Gorgon_ had been low in the atmosphere providing firing support to ground-based installations and picking off Cylon Raiders trying to get into space. _Gorgon_ had also been sniping nuclear missiles and serving as a kinetic rod sponge, soaking up damage meant for cities and ground bases. It had already been hit by three tactical nukes meant for Caprica's cities but had destroyed close to a dozen using sophisticated ECM suites to confused the nuclear missiles and throw them off course. Unfortunately the missiles had acquired new locks on the cruiser.

Drake's lip flickered up in sorrow as the cruiser broke apart on DRADIS. He saw the statistics. Its gunners were the best in the Fleet but it had suffered too much damage. A barrage of anti-ship missiles had destroyed its engines and thrusters and without either it was caught in the gravity well and was now being sucked down.

Within minutes it would crash into Parthion and kill everyone there.

The defense fleet was being mauled. His force was only a third and suffering the brunt of the Cylon attack. Thousands of Raiders had streamed forth from the defense stations and split to attack him and the planet. The other two defense fleets were stuck over the moon Giedi attempting to come in from the 'rear' of the Cylon formation. Drake's attack craft, the Vipers, Wasps, and Nighthawks were spread so thin, over hundreds of thousands of kilometers. They'd been forced to rush down on the Cylons attacking Caprica and had been met by Raiders rushing up.

On DRADIS the blip representing battleship _Hector_ flashed its green circle quickly, a red horizontal streak forming through. It then paled, became transparent, and faded. The battleship was lost, gone, exploded into a billion pieces. Its five thousand man crew was nothing more than souls on the banks of the river Styx, guided to the underworld by Hermes Psychopompus and doomed to wait on its barren and bleak shores, their passage to Elysium blocked until the proper rites of the dead could be performed.

"Sir, what are the Cylons doing? Their tactics make no sense, sir!" Mesides allowed a temporary look of fear to flash across her usually strong, confident face. "Are they playing us? They're engaging us but not fully. They have the advantage and could wipe us out-"

"They're trying to murder as many people as they can. That fleet was undamaged when it jumped back. That means Admiral Makos is still alive. They left her fleet alone to come and kill as many of our people on Caprica as they could." Drake leaned forward and rubbed his aching ribs. Even touching them hurt. "We have to hold until the planet mobilizes…"

"Sir!" Admiral Drake swiveled his head as Chief Caslet came running up and handed him a piece of blood stained paper. Caslet's hands were stained and covered in the crimson-hued fluid. "I checked it myself sir, double and triple."

"Authentic." The rear admiral closed his eyes and clutched the paper, crumbling it into a ball and holding in over his heart. "How many nuclear missiles do we have left, commander?"

Commander Mesides's mouth opened to ask why he needed to know. But her hands were already at work pulling up the inventory on the command console. "We have six strategic ones left, sir, but their guidance systems are damaged. They'd be easy pickings if they couldn't maneuver… we have no decoys left sir. All our tac-nukes have been expended and… frak, three of the doors for our silos are jammed, sir." Mesides reported through gritted teeth.

The officer swallowed and faced Caslet. "Report back to your station, Chief." Caslet nodded and ran back. "Commander…" he turned to face TRO Dameskinos, "roll the ship lieutenant… and Commander…target these coordinates…" with his good hand he pulled up a map of the southern hemisphere of Caprica, zoomed in, and manipulated the 'go to' feature until he had a series of global positioning coordinates. Only the Commander could input target coordinates for strategic missiles. "Fire all nuclear missiles on this site. Immediately." He sucked in a breath as he rubbed his shoulder whose pain had suddenly reappeared many times worse. It was sending an almost crippling burning wave of pain throughout his entire left side.

"Sir?" Mesides leaned over the console but she was already imputing the coordinates.

He recited the proper Caprican nuclear launch protocol statement in a loud voice: "This is a nuclear launch order, as a flag officer I am authorizing the release of nuclear ordnance. This is my order and mine alone." Drake shimmied his hand between the collar of his tattered and smoke-stained uniform and latched his fingers around the silver chain which perpetually hung around his neck. He pulled it off and limped towards the nuclear launch station and placed in his key.

The primary tactical officer, a major with nearly sixteen years of experience, was dead. He'd been killed before he'd even made it to CIC. Now his responsibility fell on the TRO. And Robert Drake would not condemn such a young woman to live with what he was about to do.

"Lieutenant Dameskinos, please stand back."

"Sir, regulations state the tactical officer must fire-"

"That is an order, lieutenant. Stand back immediately." Drake limped to her, his chest pressing against her shoulder. He leaned down. "Just do it, lieutenant. You don't want this on your hands."

As strong and even as his voice was it crackled with sadness.

Commander Mesides was beside him. "Why are you doing this, sir?" She had complete faith in her admiral but needed to know why he was targeting the planet.

The rear admiral looked at her and at the board. He typed in a twelve-digit alpha numeric password, held his thumb to the biometric scanner, and pressed the three red blinking buttons which fired the only three operational strategic nukes they had left.

The battleship rattled as they were ejected. The _Stone Burner_ nuclear missiles would activate their high powered, quick burn tyllium engines three kilometers from the battleship and plow into Caprica below.

"That message, commander… the Cylons have achieved surprise, total surprise across the planet. Mass casualties are being reported across ever military installation and city. They overwhelmed the defense at Depot Six-Seven. It's the second largest stockpile after Ragnar. There are a thousand strategic warheads there. High Command ordered that the missiles not fall into their possession."

"Ludus, sir… the city has nearly a million people. It'll be incinerated." Mesides ran her hands through her hair. She was shaking at the thought she would be a part of a nuclear attack on her own planet.

"There was no choice, commander." Drake squeezed her shoulder and they shared a brief moment of eye contact. The pain and horror each felt washed through them both; him for firing and her for being forced by regulations to be the one to input the coordinate. "If the Cylons ships those nukes off planet they could incinerate Caprica."

The only thing Admiral Drake could do at that moment was look at her and pray to the gods for forgiveness and pray that history would not remember him as a butcher, a killer of women and children. Because right now he felt like a murderer. For the first time in his career, with all the people he'd sent to his death and all the people he'd been responsible for killing as a ship commander, he'd never felt like a murderer until now.

"Sir… new DRADIS contacts!"

The comm. Chief threw in an incoming transmission over the speakers:

"_Othy- this is Admir- Makos…"_

* * *

Within a microsecond the light from the twin suns of Cyrannus were overwhelmed by the brilliant flashes of nuclear missiles detonating across the vast battlefield between Caprica and Giedi. Hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of fighters, bombers, and gunships plowed through what had been serene and peaceful space, quiet space, just twenty minutes before.

One of the baseships thirty kilometers from Blue squadron cracked down the middle and as if in slow motion the discs began to peel away from each other. Suddenly it exploded in a fantastic, wavy cloud of gray-white smoke and orange-red fire leapt in all directions. As fast and as wondrous as the explosion had been the flames were quickly snuffed out as the little oxygen aboard the Cylon vessel as consumed.

Medusa chanced a quick glance at a Cylon attack cruiser kilometers below the baseship as it struggled to avert a growing, fast moving debris field. It's engines flashed and it was almost clear, and she felt her heart sink, but as she squinted she could see the yellow sparkles of missiles and the flashes of flak fields. Once again brilliant explosions erupted on a Cylon ship. Explosions danced across the engine blocs of the rectangular cruiser with trapezoidal head and side gun wings. And part of the debris from the baseship slammed into the dorsal aspect of the cruiser, breaking its back clean down the center, perpendicular to its spine.

It didn't explode in a brilliant fireball. It's explosion was more muted, almost lame in comparison, but the damage was done and the ship destroyed. Medusa raised her hand from the throttle and pumped her fist.

"_Where the frak is the rest of the Cylon fleet? This is barely half of what the Admiral set out with!"_ Plucky chimed in over the wireless.

"_They might be fighting the admiral, Plucky, or attacking Picon and Scorpia, who the frak knows or cares? Just follow me in… hear that Blues? Let's go!"_

She scanned the DRADIS quickly. The Raiders in her sector were scattered. None were flying in squadron strength formations- like hers was anything close to squadron strength she admitted darkly- but few were flying in more than pairs of two or three. That let her and her now eight other Vipers and two Raptors come in with overwhelming force from multiple angles and fraking slaughter this toasters.

Medusa heard a call from the flagship for all fighters to break from _Gorgon_ as the ship fell intot he atmosphere. Even from a distance of thousands of kilometers she could see the trail of orange fire as the vessel fell to Caprica.

Below her she could see the Isthmus burning as firestorms swept the once lush jungles and white sand beaches. Inside of her she felt that fire burning which would only be stayed when every last Cylon fraker was junked.

In the distant reached of space she saw the brilliant flashes of ships jumping in. As fear and dread swept over Medusa she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Nearly a hundred Caprican warships suddenly appeared on DRADIS below and above the Cylon forces… and they were launching missiles and fighters… the day wasn't lost.

* * *

**_Battle Carrier Athena_**

Admiral Makos slammed her fist onto the command console as she personally gave the order to flush every missile tube at the closest Cylon ships. The battle carrier _Athena_ vibrated as the heavy turrets and VLS tubes spread throughout the ventral and dorsal aspects of the ship fired at anything it could get a lock on.

Cylon interference was distorting the DRADIS but their own systems were brute forcing their way through. ECM was being pumped through the EW suites to counter-jam the Cylons and the powerful transmitters on board _Athena_ and the only battle carriers in the Caprican fleet began their own jamming campaigns against their soldiers-turned-enemies.

"Admiral Drake, you've done enough, keep on station just a little longer. I'm sending in Raptors…" Makos didn't report each Raptor was equipped with half a dozen anti-ship nukes. She put the receiver against her chest and swiped her hand at Commander Corman who gave the order to launch. Two dozen Raptors appeared on DRADIS next to _Athena_, nearly a hundred and twenty more appeared throughout the formation.

Her fleet had jumped to the extreme edge of the military zone. She had no idea where the Cylons would be. Unfortunately they weren't near her except for a token force engaging swarms of Colonial attack craft. Even at full sub-light it would take ten minutes to cross the distance from where she'd jumped to Caprica's orbit. She _could_ fire at this distance but the missiles would run out of fuel and be ballistic only. That would be easy picking for Cylons and no more than a minor nuisance for their PD batteries and fire control computers.

"Raptors jumping now, sir," Corman reported.

Her eyes swiveled up to the DRADIS as it fuzzed and a radiological alarm sounded. The mighty ship's PD batteries and fighters leap into action and swatted four nuclear missiles and nearly thirty anti-ship missiles from the sky. They couldn't do much to intercept the kinetic rounds which slammed into the engine mounts and starboard flight pod but the armor held. Makos looked down briefly to see the compartments on the two-dee damage control diagram flash a soft yellow.

Corman was on the wireless, talking in one receiver and listening on the other. He grinned triumphantly as the DRADIS flared from massive EM energy interference.

"Six confirmed baseship kills, sir, and fifteen escorts destroyed."

Makos nodded an acknowledgment. Even the victory was bittersweet. Debris would rain on Caprica and kill thousands, maybe millions. And the way part of the Cylon fleet was moving… the part from Corvus…

"Only half the Cylon fleet is here." The man's whose robots had malfunctioned and were killing millions stepped up beside her. "I… hm…"

"Where's the rest?" She hid the confusion. She'd been expecting more. Caprica was the center of the alliance.

"Attacking our other home worlds," General Krios growled. He set his steely gaze his square-jawed, sharp-lined faced formed a heavy scowl in her direction.

She ignored him. Instead she turned to Dr. Graystone. Admiral Makos, just looking at him, could feel the rage building inside of her. She had to physically grab her right hand, balled into a fist, from lashing out and breaking his nose with a quick, heavy jab.

"We got lucky, general," she didn't look at Krios but kept her eye on Graystone, "what are they thinking?" Graystone shrugged out of helpless confusion. "Damnit, Graystone, you designed the fraking things!"

"I… they're not meant to attack without human orders… I… these are just _guesses-_"

"Then fraking guess, Doctor!" Growled Rear Admiral Toles from across the console. He took a sidestep to his left, menacing and intimidating the gaunt and scared doctor. "Obviously something's fraked up and we have no idea what's going the frak on! They're probably fraking murdering everyone on Picon and Scorpia!"

Toles and Krios were the only two of the senior command staff to have remained from Picon or Scorpia.

The others admirals had returned to their ships. She'd wanted to jump the entire fleet back to Caprica then Picon and then Scorpia but hadn't said that. Makos cursed herself for being what she perceived as a coward at such a time- she was the fleet commander, the supreme commander of the allied forces, and by the Gods if she ordered the fleet to Caprica it should have gone!

But how could she order the Picon and Scorpion elements to Caprica when their home worlds might be the ones being smashed to dust and burned in nuclear fire? She'd guessed, logically guessed, the Cylons would send most of their forces to Caprica while trying to hit Picon and Scorpia. They'd want to hit as much as they could and cause early damage everywhere to disorient and distract the fleet.

Admiral Toles and General Krios from Scorpia had stayed behind while the other admirals had boarded either Vipers (and taken the best interceptor Caprica had ever develop Makos regretted) or Raptors for their own ships.

If she hadn't she could have faced a mutiny. Even a distinguished, professional, and disciplined cadre of senior admirals could break if their homes and families were facing complete annihilation… and she couldn't tell herself she wouldn't have possibly done the same if she'd been in their position. So she'd split the fleet in three with a little under half to Caprica and the rest to Picon and Scorpia. And she thanked the gods as it appeared she'd guessed right.

She could tell Krios regretted the decision to not leave immediately. But the Scorpions knew ground warfare like a Caprican knew space warfare. He was needed to help here if the Cylons boarded the massive fleet shipyards, space stations, and industrial works in orbit of Caprica or on her moon. And there were nearly fifty million Cylons or more on the ground already. Toles, a Picon, had stayed, too. Makos couldn't figure out why. Maybe for solidarity? If the allies all abandoned each other…

Makos cleared it from her mind and grabbed Graystone by the arm and twisted him to face her. Her other hand lashed out and clamped his opposite bicep. "Damnit, Graystone, why the frak would the Cylons split their forces? Can we take advantage of this?"

Commander Iason Corman opined with his observation. "The Cylons are splitting their attention between the fleet and the surface. They're trying to kill our civilians, doctor."

Graystone's breath began heavy and fast and Makos pushed his back to the console and forced him to sit on the ledge. "I think… their not strategic thinkers Admiral. They can't _run _a war, Admiral, they fight… their tactical…"

Admiral Makos took a step back and thought. Her nose wrinkled. "Tactically it makes sense to kill as many soldiers and sailors but strategically it makes sense to kill civilians? But if they destroyed the fleet first then they could kill civilians-"

There were so many things she could say… she knew how Cylons thought. Or processed or something! She'd trained with them extensively and read the briefs and papers on how to effectively use them. But all of that was worthless now if they could rebel! That was _not_ possible. It hadn't been possible! What else could have changed? They couldn't rely on anything they knew already, they needed something new…

The scientist shook his head and waved a hand negatively at her. "No, they don't think like that, I guess… they think doing both is better than doing one after the other?"

"Part of their fleet is disengaging and entering powered missile envelope range…" Commander Corman reported.

The ship rocked and Makos pushed Graystone away and signaled for Major Philipis to take him to one of the chairs until Graystone could be a better help.

"Bring them in closer, Commander and spool FTLs and jump to these coordinates in forty-five seconds, commander."

"Sir?"

"We're going to pin the Cylons attacking Rear Admiral Drake between his forces and ours. We need to force the Cylons to withdraw."

Corman nodded and hid his displeasure. He didn't have to warn her than a jump so soon after jumping could be disastrous. FTLs required time to cool and re-energize after a jump.

There were two choices; both jump and bypass the Cylon force coming at them or go headlong into it and risk getting bogged down.

Being forced to jump outside the military zone had been a calculated move on her part. In truth she'd had no idea where the Cylons would be and there'd been no time for recon. They were at Caprica, she knew that from whatever fraked up message the Cylons had sent her over the CRIB.

Half of wars and winning was just being lucky enough to take advantage of the situation. And Makos had seen the perfect situation as soon as they'd jumped in.

Over a hundred ships jumped. Many of them reappeared into high orbit over Caprica, pinning the main Cylon attack force between her fleet and Drake's battered, bruised, and borderline crippled defense ships. Seven ships 'appeared' and instantly exploded as their FTLs misfired and tore apart the ships.

As soon as they'd jumped the might battle carriers released waves of hundreds of Vipers and Wasps. More Raptors screamed out of her flight pods and followed behind the tyllium contrails of hundreds of missiles.

Nearly a dozen Caprican battleship twisted in space and presented their full broadsides. As missiles tore into the Cylons ships massive kinetic penetrator rounds tore through space and armor. The molten cores of armor piercing main gun ammunition cooked tyllium fuel and warheads and ten Cylons ships exploded in the initial salvo.

They were quick though, the Cylons. Their baseships were the pinnacle of space engineering. Their engines were more powerful than _Athena_'s or her sister ships. The baseship rotated and spun to direct the sides of their discs at the fleet 'above' them and the fleet 'below' them. Their silhouettes were tiny compared to the gargantuan surface of the discs.

The Cylons fired back with a fury which overwhelmed the Colonial defenses. _Athena_ shuttered as anti-ship missiles broke through. Her port flight pod was on fire and main engine three began to flare as tyllium pumps went into emergency shutdown and their tyllium energizer reactors were flushed of fuel on pain of ignition and explosion.

"Roll the ship," Commander Corman ordered for Makos, letting her keep her attention on the battle.

"Squadron Six Four Alpha roll and move to the following position." Makos typed in the orders and transmitted them. She fell forward the moment her thumb had hit the green 'send' button, jamming it and causing her to yelp as the air was violently pushed from her body as her solar plexus were pressed into the console. Recovering quickly she shot back up and continued to give orders.

The Raptors outside continued to fire their missiles but radiological alarms, perhaps the most important device ever invented after the FTL alerted the Cylon fleet to which ships had nukes. A warship could hide its nuke compliment as long as its heavy silo doors remained closed or the nukes stayed within the armored confines of a magazine. But once loaded into a turret or the silos opened it was instant detection.

On a Raptor there was no hiding a nuke. And the Raptor crews knew this. The casualties were staggering. Their initial barrage had been successful but the Cylons had saturated the jump zones with proximity nukes and had taken out nearly a third of the Raptors before they'd even been able to fire.

For each of the sand, tan-colored craft a dozen Raiders had descended upon them. A good many of them escaped under Drake's ships, which were shedding hull components and armor and people at an alarming rate, but almost half had been destroyed. It had been one of those missions which pilots would call suicide.

Commander Corman and Admiral Makos stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Major Philipis and Rear Admiral Toles opposite them.

The main DRADIS monitor, flanked by the statues, showed them the battle in all it strategic mess. _Athena_ was firing rapidly on the Cylon ships and a whoop from the fire control stations signaled that the mighty vessel could add another ship to her young but impressive kill list.

"Sir," one of wireless techs called out, one hand on his earbud and the other dancing across his station, "we're getting a signal from Admiral Drake, sir."

Makos had him throw it to her station. "_Athena Actual."_

"_Admiral, long range coms are spotty, but if you can, Myrmidon needs reinforcements and we've lost control of all defense stations."_

"_Roger, Othyros Actual but keep on stat…"_ she trailed off as the DRADIS blips began changing and the Cylon's red circular blips began winking away. "_You-"_

"_They're jumping away, Admiral… they're jumping away!"_

_

* * *

  
_

**Battle carrier **_**Athena**_

**Holding Station In Orbit of Caprica**

The CIC was quiet, deathly quiet. Admiral Makos and _Athena_ and half a dozen battleships had just returned from Ragnar Anchorage. She'd defied orders from the president and the secretary of war and had just gotten off the wireless where the president had cursed her and praised her in the span of ten minutes.

"We didn't have a choice, sir," Commander Corman said softly. "The Cylons had Ragnar. We had to do it. Those people died as heroes."

"I know, commander," Makos nodded, "they did. But I pray you never have to kill your own sailors to save even more." She looked down at the console. "I don't do regrets, Commander, but we should have seen it. The Cylons wanted nukes. Ragnar had our largest stockpile after the Depot…" she bit her lip as she came to a realization that what had to be done truly had to be done. Admiral Drake had been forced to do far worse. "Those men and women I condemned to be crushed to death will be honored."

"I know, sir. It was either Ragnar or let them get nukes. We had to destroy it, sir."

She snorted at the 'we.' There was no 'we' in command. There was only 'her' and 'I' in Makos's mind. Like Admiral Drake she'd personally given the order to fire nukes on the station and personally pressed the button.

The Cylons had gained control of the lower levels of Ragnar and as ferocious a fight as the Marines were putting up they couldn't win. Makos couldn't have broken through the Cylon blockade so she'd ordered _Athena_ to go in through one of the secret routes to the station and blow its mooring engines and with the force of the nuclear explosions, push it into the gas giant and crush it.

Major Philipis walked up and nodded to Corman to acknowledge his presence. "Reports, sir, from the planet." Makos flicked her wrist for him to continue. "There's between thirty and fifty million Centurions spread throughout the planet in our cities. Cap City is safe, for now, but suffered heavy damage in the initial attacks… initial civilian casualties are estimated at a hundred million dead. Cylons control half of our military bases and have an unknown but significant number of armored and air divisions under their control… they've begun moving into the cities and taking civilian prisoners as human shields. General Antilus is planning a major offensive in Attia, sir, to secure the main continent and industrial centers.

"Myrmidon Fleet Station is currently under quarantine until the Marines eliminate the Cylons attempting to take control. The subterranean bases on Giedi are currently under Cylon control, as are the moon's defense batteries. Marines also cleared most of the Cylons from Nixos already, so at least our other moon is safe… Admiral Varro's ships have been sniping any missile launches from Giedi but he's requested authorization for kinetic penetrators…"

"Very well," Makos sighed. "We'll need the bases… and we'll have to go in and physically clear out the tyllium mines. Commander Corman," the commander straightened at his name, "I'll need a list of all ships which suffered minimal damage to give orbital support to General Antilus." She turned her attention back to the major. "What's the final butcher's bill for our fleet?"

"Between what we had to scuttle and what we lost in the battle… three battle carriers, ten battleships, three times that in cruisers, nearly sixty destroyers, and close to twenty thousand fighters and bombers of various models from the Fleet and planet, sir. All the defense stations around Caprica have been destroyed out either by us or scuttled by the Cylons. We still have control of six clusters of automated missile turrets and command centers covering sectors one, nine, and twelve… the other seventeen are uncovered, sir. And DRADIS nets have blind spots- currently being filled by pickets and Raptors- in thirty-seven sectors.

"Convoy 095 was also hijacked by the Cylons, location unknown, with significant numbers of machine parts, spares for ships, and munitions. Of the assault landing ships scheduled for the Corvus and the Pact invasion we destroyed one hundreds and seventy-three attempting to flee the system. Slightly over a thousand landed in various locations on Caprica, each with two reinforced brigades… the other thousand jumped, location unknown.

"During the battle the Cylons also hijacked a significant number of ore freighters, machine ships, refinery vessels, and other assorted transports… we're still compiling a list.

"They also crashed the planetary network and we believe have infected a majority of military communications systems on the planet with viruses."

"Our ships were lucky… they didn't have physical access," Corman said as some sort of conciliation.

"Yes, sir. The preliminary military casualties are coming in at close to a million fleet personnel lost, fifteen times that in army and Marines, Admiral."

"The _Vulcan_ yards will be the most significant loss. What is the estimated time for repair?" Makos asked.

"Four to five months, sir," Philipis answered, swallowing. "We have some repair ships but half our surviving battleships will need six months in the yard, minimum."

Commander Corman frowned with closed eyes. Streaks of gray had seemingly appeared overnight and lines creased his forehead and cheeks. Even Makos's fair skin was showing its age.

"Only five days and we've lost so much." Corman's shoulders dropped. "Our offensive capabilities are smashed. That gives the Cylons the initiative, sir."

"We'll need to link back up with the rest of the fleet. We need a coherent strategy with Picon and Scorpia to deal with this threat. But with so many Cylons on the surface and their fleet… somewhere… and the need to repair-"

"We're in a bind, sir." The major finished for her.

Makos tilted her head and her lip creased upwards into a remorseful lip smile. Her eyes, once glittering with a fire and spirit few could match, had darkened and hardened in just five days. Everything had once appeared so bright, so glorious for Caprica and the Triumvirate. Now millions lay in the streets and cities across Caprica had been turned to ash.

She sucked in a breath and held out her hand for Philipis's full report, which would list the casualties in painful detail, when a beep and an urgent call from the DRADIS tech forced her attention away.

"What is it?" She demanded, standing over the tech and looking at his screen. Her face contorted and her spine straightened. Makos bent back over and jammed a finger onto the monitor. "The gods are fraking with us. Confirm." She ordered.

There was a lone ship out there. A courier. A military courier.

"Confirmed… they're transmitting." The DRADIS tech reported. The wireless tech confirmed.

"On speakers."

"_Caprica… Caprican Fleet… this is Admiral Bernard Cain of the Unified Tauron Republics…requesting permission to come aboard your flagship…"_


End file.
